


Eat You Alive

by thecapn



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Child Abuse, Depression, Drug Use, Gore, Graphic Description, M/M, Self Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Underage Drinking, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-07
Updated: 2013-07-07
Packaged: 2017-12-18 04:48:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 96,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/875793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecapn/pseuds/thecapn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jensen is a werewolf. Jared is the boy who sits next to him in English class.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Jensen snarls a wordless, animal sound and buries his fingers into soft, damp dirt. The cold closes in around him from all sides, nearly oppressive. Nearly. If it weren’t for the fire burning bright and hot inside of him the frigidness of the world would be stifling. An inferno of righteous fury and some abnormal, supernatural, spiritual thread that sews his seams together and keeps him warm in the dark of the night.

“Come on,” he growls through teeth clenched so hard that his jaw creaks in protest. “Come on, take it. Fucking take it, bitch.”

His entire body feels like a loose tooth. Dead, out of place, in the way. Every movement is a spike of pain that rolls right through him, bowing his naked back and locking the muscles in his bare thighs. It’s agony that he can’t not enjoy. Blissful masochism.

Another wave rolls through him and he lets himself collapse to the forest floor, breathing heavy pants that quake the dead leaves matting the ground around him.

Any other night he would have sunk into it, allowed the moonlight to wash over him and take him, change him. Moon is full, though, and if She demands him Her animal, She’s going to have to pry the wolf out of him by the skin of Her teeth.

The elders used to say that there are some who can resist the Moon when She calls and say no to the Goddess in the full moonlight. Jensen isn’t one of those wolves. Not today.

He just wants control over this. Just this one thing.

“Come on, you bitch!” Jensen curls his lip and bares his teeth up to the sky, breath billowing white clouds into the frigid Vermont air. “Take it, fucking take it!”

He can feel the wolf in his veins, his muscle, pacing the cage of his ribs. It’s feral and obtrusive and it burns like fire. The Moon beckons at him, whispers in his ear with cold wind to just let go, shed his humanity and run in Her light free of the constraints of his human flesh: to obey, submit.

“Shit!” he coughs up when his spine bows and pulls taut like tension wire. “Fuck, fuck!” Jensen clenches his jaw and throws himself back into the earth in some futile bid to distract his body away from change. She plucks his backbone like a guitar string, only instead of a sweet note She plays out a deafening crack.

Jensen screams, but the sound is drowned out by the crackle of his spine shattering and the tear of his skin splitting like over-ripened fruit.

“No, no,” he pants through the tremors of pain rattling up his teeth. “C’mon!”

His knuckles pop and he can feel the mounting pressure in his gums that spikes pain up into his cheekbones, suffocating. Static prickles of hair race up and down his skin, coarse fur bursting over his shoulders and down his back before he can fight it into arrest.

He groans into the leaves, billowing steam up into the darkness. “Is that it?” he demands. “Is that all you’ve got?”

His spine crunches up, contorting his body grotesquely before the bones splinter and convert into a Jacob’s ladder, vertebrae rolling up and out, grinding and grating in Jensen’s ears before swaths of flesh and muscle and fur wrap up the stem of bone.

His teeth go off like gunshots in his mouth and he sucks in a bloody, pained breath through sharp canines and jagged molars.

“C’mon, c’mon,” is that last thing he can snarl out before his jaw warps and snaps, tearing apart his mouth and wrecking his lips until all his screams are howls. Come and get me, he wails.

He stands up while he still can: a horrible wolfish thing with a muzzle and bared teeth and a whipping tail balanced on spindly human legs, clawing at his face with thin human fingers.

He yelps and howls again when his fingernails twist and crack to give way to claws. He tenses the muscles in his thighs and clenches his fists against the slow char burn of his body straining against the construct of itself and tries to fight it back harder still, hating every second he can’t control the change in the moonlight. He digs the sharp claws into his palms, tries to ground himself in a different sort of pain, but his femurs buckle and the arches of his feet crackle and elongate -long and graceful like a swan’s throat, but the swan thrashes and throws him off balance so he’s back on the forest floor, face down in the leaves that he can smell, wet and rotting underneath him. Tendons snap, muscles cramp, bones churn and scrape and he coughs up bile into the dirt.

The music of the shift settles when his bones finally set and he’s left a limp, whimpering pile of fur.

The trees shift gently in the wind, bare branches scraping and Jensen can hear them, can hear everything. He can hear the thundering heartbeat of a still rabbit at the edge of the clearing; its rapid, short breaths. He can hear the brook buried deeper in the woods, the creak of the water resisting winter’s pull coaxing stagnation and ice.

He whines high and tight in his throat before getting his feet up underneath of himself. He stretches, feels the new muscles pull and stretch in his flanks, across his shoulders when he arches into the ground. It feels good, objectively.

He’d enjoy it more it he’d had any hope of not ending up here.

 _The real curse of the werewolf_ , Jensen thinks.

Christ, he’s tired.

-

There was a tree when Alona was a child, set in a far corner of the property of Silvalopus. She has memories of it green and flourishing, but they’re vague and muggy. It was huge with wide, sprawling branches that reached up, up, up for the sun and roots that went down, down, down into the earth.

She doesn’t know why it died. One day she raced with the other pups through the tall grasses, tripping over her big feet and grinning toothy smiles with her tongue lolling and the tree wasn’t tall anymore. The branches were stripped bare, leaving spindly twigs scraping against the blue sky. The roots that spiraled into the dirt and stretched out under the grass Alona scrunched her toes into were all nothing but petrified wood.

She’d sat down at the base of the tree, frowning.

Dead things were an abstract concept to her at that age. ‘Dead’ was something that happened away from her, to people she didn’t really know. Dead occurred and was then whisked away from her. Dead happened, she knew. Dead happened, and then it was supposed to leave.

The tree was still there, trunk and branches and roots. It was dead, but it still stood tall.

Watching Jensen makes her sad like watching that tree made her sad.

“Hey,” she raps lightly against the doorframe, pausing in the open archway to his bedroom without actually crossing the threshold.

He’s lying face down on his bed, head turned to stare at the wall instead of the door that never closes. There’s a dozen or so candles that conflict aromas and make the entire house stink to high heaven burning down to the wick on his desktop, seated on a massive slab of multi-colored wax that is the remnants of the veterans of Jensen’s war to give everyone in the house a migraine. The walls are bare; a neutral beige color the last tenants had slapped on before they’d moved out to make the house presentable to a broader range of potential buyers, but now the color just burdens the entire atmosphere with stifling plainness. The floor is empty, too- save the desk in one corner and the mattress perched on the bare box-spring shoved up against the wall under the windows.

Alona forgets that they’ve lived here for two years whenever she’s near Jensen’s room.

Vacant.

“Hey,” she says again, a little bit louder even though she knows he heard her the first time and that, most likely, he was awake before she had even rolled out of bed. “Sam says it’s time to get up, sleepyhead.”

She watches the muscles in his back bunch and shift under his skin when he pushes himself up off the mattress, sheets puddling around his knees before he kicks them off deftly and strides silently, resolutely towards the closet doors.

Alona props herself against his door frame, doorjamb gouging into her shoulder as she crosses one foot over the other and leans all of her weight into the house. She watches silently and waits for him to shimmy into a pair of jeans and a dark blue t-shirt that must have belonged to Michael or Sebastian at some point, because the ‘v’ of the collar comes to a point halfway down his sternum so she can see his ribs flex when he breathes and his pectorals tense and jump when he jerks on a pair of ratty Doc Martens that are more scuff than leather.

“Jacket,” she calls to remind him, tugging on the hem of her own coat to drive the point.

He shoots her the first look of the morning: a blank, mild sort of expression, like there’s gauze pulled tight over his face that smothers and distorts emotions from showing. The black jacket he does end up pulling on is too light for appearances and too heavy for any actual comfort, but they’ll have to make due.

“C’mon,” she claps her hands, likes she’s calling a puppy and earns her second look of the morning, and he actually gets his eyebrows to tilt down irritably for her. “We’re gonna be late, grab your backpack. And blow out the candles; you’ll burn the house down.”

As soon as the words are out of her mouth Alona wants to snatch them up and stuff them right back down her throat where they came from, but Jensen’s either unfazed or not listening because he continues on as if she’d said nothing at all.

Alona waits him out, loitering on the edge of the doorframe until she steps to the side so he can breeze past her, and then trails a pace and a half behind him down the narrow staircase and into the kitchen.

Tom and Michael are already crowding Sam in the kitchen, chasing each other around the island and yipping for more bacon. Mock howls litter the air, swirling into the thick, homey scent of warm yeast and frying meat.

“Sh,” Sam hisses and swipes at Michael when he dances too close. “You’ll wake the pups!”

“If I have to be up, so should they!” Michael proclaims around the half a roll he’d stuffed into his mouth.

She swats at him again before returning to her spitting pots and pans.

Sam graces Alona with a smile and Alona grins right back before swiping a bagel- half for her and half that she’ll guilt Jensen into eating on their way to school.

“How are you doing, honey?” Sam asks, shuffling bacon around in the pan. “Sleep well? Ready for school?”

“Yeah, mom,” Alona nods, popping a handful of grapes into her mouth and chewing happily. She slips up onto one of the scarred wooden stools and picks at the bowl of fruit set out and swings her feet. Michael and Tom flick crumbs at each other across the wide, empty table, bickering incessantly. Sam roots through overstuffed drawers for their good spatula. Upstairs Alona can hear Christian griping as he stumbles out of the room he shares with Michael and Tom, cursing their names for letting him sleep in. Below their feet there’s the dull thrum of heavy bass that vibrates up through the floor and into the soles of them and Sebastian and Mark must be awake already, though they won’t come up for food for another hour because they like to cut the time between breakfast and work close enough that they have to spend the least amount of time applying themselves to either. The house stirs and functions, and in the middle of all that stands Jensen, staring down the hallway at a closed door.

“Sam?” Jensen speaks up and for some reason Alona always expects his voice to be soft. He’s lost everything else that Alona recalls characterized him in his youth, why not his voice? But the pale slip of a boy Alona’s been attempting to coax back into living has a deep, strong voice that never stutters or fails.

A small stillness falls over the kitchen, a sort of subdued hush that doesn’t want to be a hush because that would jeopardize the situation. Tom and Michael pause. Alona stops kicking her feet and swallows.

“Yeah, sweetie?” Sam responds, poorly covering the tentative nature of her tone, and Alona thinks for a moment that Jensen’s like a bunny that needs to be handled with care and spoken to with soft words.

“Did my dad go out last night at all?” Jensen stares down the door at the end of the hall like it’s going to give him the answer.

“No,” Samantha frowns and scoffs under her breath, turning back to scrape eggs out of bacon grease. “No, our great Alpha would rather pace his office than run with his pack.”

Jensen chews on the inside of his lip for a moment and Alona’s watching him close enough that she can see his weight shift onto his front foot before he pulls back.

Alona remembers that she used to think Jensen was the bravest boy she knew.

He still is the bravest boy she knows, but that’s sad now.

“C’mon,” she hops up off her stool to tug at Jensen’s elbow and he startles. “I gotta get to the library before the rush to finish my presentation. Walk me to school.”

Jensen shrugs and slings his backpack over his shoulder, not arguing.

Alona knew he wouldn’t.

She has to practically shove the bagel down his throat and clamp his jaws shut like forcing a dog to take medication on their walk to school, but she gets it done.

One day he’s going to come back to himself. He’ll thank her for everything then.

-

The thing Jensen hates the most about living in Vermont is the humans.

The thing Jensen hates the most about living is the humans.

They’re petty, feral things with blunt fingers and dull teeth that he has to hide half his face from for fear of being skinned for pelts and science.

The elders say the humans attack what they don’t understand, beat it and burn it down. For all their civilized mannerisms they’ve always strived for answers. First their gods, then a God, then Science; each eclipsing the other. In his more introspective moments Jensen wonders what will come next. In a way, humans burn for the hunt far more than Jensen ever does.

Jensen has all the answers he ever needs in moonlight and fire, blood and bone.

But the humans are the majority and Jensen is a secret, so he has to mingle with them. He has to learn their history and their math and their language and he has to understand how they intersperse and speak and socialize with one another. He has to watch them, but not hunt them. He has to observe them, but not track.

Still, high school is a level of hell Jensen’s sure Dante couldn’t even fathom.

“Go on,” Alona ushers, shoving at his back and he thinks he can feel her slip something –an apple that she grabbed from the fruit bowl, maybe- into his bag. “Get to class.”

Students shuffle perceptibly out of Jensen’s way when he stalks down the hall. They clear out of his path as much as they can because his teeth are too sharp and his eyes are too wild and his clothes don’t fit and he has no friends.

He slips into his first period English classroom, slides to the back of the room and takes the seat closest to the window before he realizes that he forgot his books at home. He shrugs to himself and slouches low in his chair, shirt scraping up his spine. Anything he would have done with a notebook would have been purely for show anyway, so he’s not actually that worried about it.

The rest of the class shuffles in on clumsy human feet that grate loudly against the tile of the school halls over the next few minutes while Jensen stares out of the window and into the bare forest just beyond the football field. He can’t smell it anymore, inside, but there’s snow on the wind, building taut in the bleak grey and white of the sky.

Jensen can’t find words to properly express how much he loves snow. Vast white sheets of frigidness and silence that arrest entire landscapes, coat trees and rocks and mountains and bury the dirt and dead under a cool, clean blankness that smells crisp and fresh and pure in ways that no living thing ever could. The snow is silent in ways that fill up the noise of Jensen’s head, smothers him the same way it smothers everything else.

His musings shatter as the school bell shrills and Mr. Hawthorne clears his throat, demanding attention.

Mr. Hawthorne is a tall, thin human with rimless glasses, a slicked-back scalp of blond hair and an affinity for the dramatic, but the kid standing next to him is taller and thinner, practically swallowed up by the burgundy sweatshirt that he’s swimming in. His Adidas sneakers have seen better days, but those are long gone: scuffed and abused with the outer seams picked apart and worn down to the point that Jensen can tell that his socks don’t match. His jeans are threadbare with holes so wide that Jensen can see the kid’s knees, bluish and pale in the winter cold.

“This is Jared Padalecki,” Mr. Hawthorne introduces somberly, pronouncing ‘Pad-a-leck-i’ obnoxiously with one hand on the kid’s shoulder. “He’ll be joining us for the remainder of the year. Treat him like kin, children. Treat him like kin.” He gives Jared a small shove deeper into the room and Jared waves uncomfortably to his new peers and shoots a brief, brilliant smile, shoulders hunching in on himself.

Jensen gives the air a cursory scenting, just to get the kid in his nose, and is mutely surprised that the new boy smells like dirt and dead leaves and burnt tobacco and blood. He scents harder, nostrils flaring, trying to catch something human about him, but his natural scent is buried underneath that layer of abrasive fragrance.

The kid sloughs down the narrow aisle between desks and students mumbling half questions about why a new kid would join the class so late in the year and slots into the one right next to Jensen, head down, everything about him knotted up except for that eager-to-please smile he’s shooting at anyone who looks his way. He ducks his head down between his shoulders and picks at the edge of his desk where the fake-wood linoleum is peeling.

There is a part of Jensen, perhaps a part of him that he’ll never be able to escape, that sees the kid’s bowed head and lowered shoulders and wants to angle his chin up and pull his own shoulders back and lord over that smile and still those twitching fingers. The kid is all limbs and hair, twiggy and scared in his new environment and there is the animal in Jensen that wants to accept his timidness as supplication and reign over it.

Chris and Tom entertain a few human friends from time to time, the type of human that seeks thrills and is addicted to adrenaline and who knows what else, who will say, “Whoa, dude! That’s so fucking cool!” when they wreck their bikes or tear down a mountainside or jump off a roof instead of, “Nobody could have survived that. What’s wrong with you?” Brain cells damaged and disbelief suspended by drugs and alcohol and life enough to be good for a laugh but not much of a conversation.

Jensen feels no inclination to entertain any sort of idiot, let alone a human one.

He sniffs again with the dull hope that as he warms up the boy will start to smell like himself and Jensen will be able to get his number but when he glances over he can see cigarette ashes buried in the kid’s messy brown hair, so he figures it’s a lost cause.

He settles deeper into his seat and stares out the window, waiting for the sky to give way to snow.

-

Jensen sits outside during his lunch period, shoulders pressed back against the raw brick of the building, shirt and jacket strewn off to the side because the fabric was stifling. He angles his head back and bares his neck to the cold to feel the sweat chased out of the creases of his skin by the curls of wind cutting through the parking lot.

The lot is barren all around him. Cold cars, cold asphalt, and cold air keep everyone firmly sequestered inside, so Jensen isn’t all that concerned about someone seeing him tucked up behind the doors out next to the field half naked.

So, imagine his surprise when the doors clatter open and none other than the human boy, the new kid, Jared Padalecki comes stalking into the parking lot, glancing around warily and missing Jensen by a mile.

Jensen exhales a foggy puff, irritation tugging at the edges of his mouth as he tucks himself deeper in the shadow of the building swiftly. He has a half an hour of freedom, he isn’t going to spare a second of it for some human’s sake, so he watches, waits for the boy to leave and give Jensen back his moment alone.

The kid –Jared- limps as he fishes around in his jeans pocket for a set of keys and slots them into the trunk lock of a beat up ’73 Ford Maverick that’s all front seat and rusty chipping paint that might have been blue once upon a time. He pops the trunk and despite himself Jensen cranes his neck slightly to see what’s inside.

Clothes.

Lots of clothes. Mounds of multi-colored fabrics twisted all around the available trunk space, wrinkled and shoved around in clumps. Jensen isn’t close enough to be able to catch a whiff and the wind is rolling in the wrong direction to carry the scent to him, but he’d bet that it all smells overwhelmingly, irrevocably of true flesh and real self. Like Jared.

The human glances around one more time before slicing open the zipper of his sweatshirt, flaying it open down then center of his chest before stripping quickly. He roots through the trunk hastily, hopping on the balls of his feet and muttering, “Shit, fuck, cold, c’mon,” under his breath. He’s not wearing anything underneath the sweatshirt, which Jensen thinks is odd, but then again what the hell does he know about what’s abnormal or mundane in the human world.

The play of muscles in the boy’s back is equal parts hypnotizing and unsettling as he exclusively favors his right side. He keeps his left arm tucked into his torso like a broken wing as he plucks up a black thermal shirt from the trunk and threads his right arm and head through indelicately. The left arm is an obvious and awkward effort, though. He bares his teeth and hisses out a small cloud into the empty air as he struggles. When he turns right Jensen can see an inky purple bruise curling up underneath his pectoral muscle, smudged down over his torso.

 _Cracked ribs_ , Jensen thinks vaguely as he watches the other boy labor. If he had to guess, that is. He’s not a doctor but he’s seen his fair share of hurt and knows that Jared should wrap his torso for support if he actually wants to feel better any time soon.

Jensen shrugs and turns back to stare out at the woods.

-

The final school bell rings and Jensen is still in the classroom as per the request of Mrs. Vivienne Lewicki, disgruntled underpaid public school teacher extraordinaire.

The things in this world that Jensen doesn’t understand probably outweigh the things that he does. For instance, he knows how far and how fast he can run before his throat starts burning and his body sets to trembling. He knows how hard he needs to clench his teeth to break the bones of a rabbit, a deer, a wolf, a man. He knows that the only reason his father is still alpha of the pack is because he keeps the finances in order and no one else is keen for the job. He knows that any respect the position once held was lost in the fire.

Physics, however, escapes him.

Jensen shifts uncomfortably in his seat, stifling a whine in his throat as he watches the students file out. The smell of the cold threads in through their legs, too wispy thin for Jensen to really get a lungful to calm himself down. There’s no window in Mrs. Lewicki’s classroom and it drives Jensen crazy, being cut off from the trees and the sky and the sun like that. He gets itchy in a way that’s got thick fur prickling underneath his skin all along his spine. He already sweat through his shirt and gnawed the inside of his lip bloody and if the girl who sits behind him isn’t used to his fidgeting by now there’s nothing he can do for her.

“Jensen,” Mrs. Lewicki sighs once that last loitering girl finally shrugs her backpack over her shoulder and it’s just the two of them. She rubs at her temple with two kneading fingers and strolls a sad, leisurely pace over to his desk.

He stifles an irritated snarl in the back of his throat, lips twitching slightly with the effort.

She’s thin and French, with a narrow nose that slopes straight out of her brow and a thick mess of black hair that always smells overwhelmingly of apple shampoo. When she sits on the desk in front of him, black pencil skirt drawn tight over her thighs, she doesn’t know Jensen could chew her up and spit her out again.

“Jensen, are you even listening to me?” She huffs, thinly groomed eyebrows arching in vexation and no, Jensen isn’t even listening to her a little bit.

His fingers scritch against the top of the desk compulsively and his eyes dart to the door and around the room and back again, but it isn’t until Mrs. Lewicki puts herself in his face, slaps her hands down on top of his desk that he really even acknowledges she’s there.

“Do you know what your problem is, Jensen?” she demands and her breath smells like the strong black coffee she’s been sipping on all day and watermelon bubble gum.

Jensen blinks at her.

“You just,” she huffs out an irritated sigh, honest distress plaguing her face, “Don’t care. You have so much potential. I hate to see you throw it all away because you don’t care. You just don’t care, Jensen. And it kills me because you could be great; you could be spectacular!” She slaps her hand down on the desk again and Jensen jumps.

“I’m… sorry?” If he had the ears for it, they’d be lying flat against his skull.

She frowns at him; the lipstick that used to be bright red that morning is now faded and chalky in the creases of her lips when she purses them. “What do you want to do, Jensen?”

“Go home.”

“No,” Mrs. Lewicki chuffs a laugh and leans back, out of Jensen’s space and he can finally breathe. “I mean, what do you want to do with your life?”

Jensen cocks his head to the side, brow creased.

“You know,” she persists. “Job, wife, car. Go to college, get a degree, find a nice girl to bring home, maybe have a few kids? What do you want to do?”

Jensen swallows audibly around his dry tongue and bounces his knee rapidly under the desk. “I don’t know,” he says, but what he actually means is that he doesn’t really care.

Mrs. Lewicki looks a little disappointed, and that expression haunts Jensen as he weaves his way out of the building.

-

“Jesen!” one starts and the others quickly take up the chorus of Jesen, Jesen, Jesen before Jensen is even all the way through the door and he’s knocked back onto the stoop by a wave of small bodies.

“Hi, hi, hello,” Jensen greets each of the little ones when really all he wants to do is lie down on the floor and sleep for a year right there. His head throbs like his brain is swelling and pressing up against the inside of his skull tighter and tighter with each pump of his heart while his eyes feel like they’re sinking deeper and deeper into his face with just how dirt tired he is. But he fights against his own face to put a smile on as he wades his way through the crush of tiny bodies and one yipping puppy as they try and climb his legs and tug on his arms.

“Look, Jesen!” Nicole yanks hard on his hand and Jensen wonders if, when the day where they can properly pronounce the ‘n’ without intent focus finally comes, they’ll feel sheepish about slandering his name. “I drew’ned a picture!” She shoves a piece of construction paper that smells like sweet like processed wood pulp and bitter Crayola markers against his chest.

“Yeah?” he musters a stiff little smile for her while simultaneously attempting to hold Jenna up as she dangles from his palm and avoid stepping on Robby where he snuffles around Jensen’s feet, taking in the smells of school and human sunk deep into the fibers of his clothes. He makes a show of looking at the picture –a stilted, black animal under the Moon- and plasters a gauche astonished expression on his face, hoping it’ll be enough to appease her. “That’s great, Nikki!” he gasps loudly, like he’s surprised by her artistic prowess and the three at his feet collapse into pleased giggles.

He scrubs at his forehead and glances around subtly for Sam.

To be honest, he doesn’t understand why the little ones like him. He’s not particularly good with them, he’s not around often, and he’s almost never as enthusiastic to see them as they are to see him. Alona dotes on them, Norman will wrestle and play pretend with them for hours, Sebastian will beckon them close like he’s sharing a great big secret when he talks to them, but nine times out of ten when Jensen walks into a room everyone else ceases to exist.

“Jensen?” Jenna asks softly, pronouncing carefully. “Sam and Em says we has to take a nap soon.”

“You should listen to Sam and Emily, Jen,” Jensen intones, not prepared to join in any crusade to defy the women who helped raise him.

“I know,” Jenna huffs petulantly. “Will you read to us, Jesen? Please?”

“Please?” Nikki chimes in to the chorus, rocking on her heels and clasping her hands under her chin.

Robby yips and rolls onto his back, kicking his paws up into the air and sweeping his tail in a wide arch across the scarred wood flooring. His chubby puppy belly jiggles when he whines.

Every cell of Jensen wants to go to his room and nap until his head stops hurting, but he doesn’t think there’s enough time in the world for that.

He holds out his hand to be led forward, figuring to get it over with quick.

Nikki erupts into giggles and Jenna grabs his wrist and Robby trots after them with his little nails click-clacking against the floor.

Jenna slaps The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh against his chest and shoves him down to the floor in between their two beds, with Jenna and Nicole curled together on one and Robby flopped out over the other, and he spends the entire story wondering just what the fuck happened to Eeyore.

-

With the darkness comes snow in thick torrents. Jensen cracks his nails, breaks his spine, and spits out his teeth so that he can run through it.

His body is a locomotive and his breath is hissing steam as he burns himself out chasing the curve of the horizon through the trees.

He loops down by the river and back around through the hills on the long way home at a steady trot that burns pleasantly in his muscles. By the time he slinks out of the forest and back into civilization his coat is plastered to his body with sweat and snow, clumped up and shining black in the moonlight. There’s a gate and a dog door for the house without a name they live in now; which Misha and Matt think is hilarious, but Jensen prefers not to use it because he’s not a fucking dog, opting instead to shimmy his way under the fence in the back yard.

There’s a trail of paw prints indenting the snow leading to where Jensen crouches next to the house to reign it all back in -thumbs and tongue and nose and toes all back in the proper order- before scaling the trellis up to his open bedroom window and rolling into bed.

He hits the mattress hard, closes his eyes, and then opens them again twenty minutes later when Alona comes to call with urgings of up and out and get to school.

He pulls on a pair of jeans –the same ones he was wearing yesterday, not that anyone pays enough attention to him to ever notice- and a navy shirt that has thin patches and thread-bare holes around the collar and the seams of the sleeves.

The Docs are the only thing Jensen is sure that he owns. His status as the only person with a single room in the house other than his father lends him to a bit more territory than he was used to two years ago, but clothing has always been a communal thing.

The shirt Alona is wearing is hers and Katie’s and Gen’s and the jeans have been tossed back and forth between her and Danneel since the seasons started to set. They all sleep between two mattresses or the floor in the room down the hall, or sometimes just in a heap on one bed when it’s cold. The closet is a pot. Just like Christian, Tom and Michael, who he used to bunk with. Just like Misha, Matt, Mark and Sebastian. The mated couples used to have their own rooms together or now, like Jeff and Hilarie, their own house.

Jensen, though? Jensen’s not sure where he stands anymore.

His shirt used to be his, Christian, Tom, and Michael’s. Now it’s just his.

“C’mon, hustle,” Alona chirps when he stops looking for his jacket and just stares into the mess of his closet like it has answers for him.

Jensen leads the way down the stairs, glancing at the office door as he passes. He listens in and can hear steady breathing like Alpha is resting or sleeping on the small couch he’d shoved in there and for a moment Jensen wonders if his father ever listens back.

Like every morning, Jensen thinks about huffing and puffing and blowing the door down. Like every morning, Jensen doesn’t.

Tom and Michael laugh the entire way to school, pushing each other into the snow banks packed high and overflowing onto the sidewalk from the early run at clearing the roads, and they yowl play howls back and forth. Alona rolls her eyes and walks faster, dragging Jensen with her all the way to the front of the school where she sees him off like he’s some sort of toddler who can’t find his own way.

She pats his back, slipping a muffin into his bag next to the apple he didn’t eat yesterday and Jensen dutifully pretends not to notice because somewhere down that road lay a conversation that he doesn’t care to have.

He gets to English early, but for the first time since he can remember he’s not the earliest.

Jared Padalecki sits at the same desk he laid claim to yesterday, one displaced from the window at the very back of the room. His shoulders are mountains and his spine is the valley between as he crouches over a thick notebook, right hand scrawling at a slow, steady pace and the left tucked into his stomach.

Either he feels Jensen’s stare or the nearly physically assault of the silence in the room, because he glances up.

His lip is split in a wedged scab that’s bruised and swollen down into his chin, his hair is dark and shiny and thick like he’s a day late for a shower, and there are deep, dark purple splotches smudged up under his eyes that speak of weary, sleepless nights.

 _Don’t stare_ , Jensen thinks, even as he stares right at the swell of Jared’s lower lip, the juxtaposition of pale skin and livid bruise. He isn’t sure what use it’s going to be pretending he doesn’t notice Jared’s lip because it’s practically a neon sign blazing big and loud and Jensen doesn’t want anything to do with it. He doesn’t want Jared to catch him looking, see him understanding, and think that Jensen’s going to react. Jensen can’t even react to himself.

 _Don’t stare_ , Jensen thinks again, because he can’t stop fucking staring.

“Uh,” Jared starts awkwardly after a few beats of tense silence and Jensen snaps-to, accidentally making eye contact and shit, shit, shit. “Hi.” He smiles, slow and self-assured despite the cut pulling taut against his lips and lifts his hand in a small wave in Jensen’s direction even though it can’t be doing his ribs any favors.

Jensen feels his brow knit as a stupid look of confusion swamps his face.

He hunts Jared’s eyes, looking for the shadow of the person planting bruises on him or the cracks of sleepless nights or the dullness of an entire wardrobe in the trunk of a car, but there’s nothing. It’s all clear hazel eyes and soft lines.

There should be scars.

“Uh,” Jared says again when Jensen fails to respond. His fingers start to curl back into his palm.

“Hi,” Jensen blurts, too fast, too loud. Mortification hits him just as soon as the word jumps his lips, searing his face and down his neck.

The corners of Jared’s mouth twitch up higher and if he laughs Jensen’s going to die.

Jensen does something he’s never done before.

He turns heel and runs away with his tail tucked between his legs.


	2. Chapter 2

Alona wakes up Wednesday morning smashed up against Katie’s side with Gen’s legs strewn in a tangle over her hips, feeling warm and safe. She breathes the smell of the four of them deeply into her sinuses before wriggling out of the trap of legs and limbs.  
  
“You going to school again?” Danneel slurs into the pillow.  
  
“Yup,” Alona pops her lips as she wriggles into a pair of washed out blue jeans and a pale pink blouse. “Just like yesterday, and the day before that,” she says loudly, pointed like it’s going to rouse Katie out of bed and into school clothes.  
  
Katie groans and buries her face deeper into the pillows.  
  
“Lame,” Danneel yawns before curling back into the nest of blankets and pillows and Gen.  
  
Alona snorts as she stuffs her feet into a pair of scuffed up boots, foregoing socks. She pulls on a brown leather jacket that’s so old it wasn’t socially acceptable to wear in public again until very recently. It might have been Sam’s or Rebecca’s when it was new, salvaged from the fires and jammed into a box until Alona dug it up recently.  
  
She twists and turns in the mirror, takes herself in from every angle until she’s satisfied with her appearance. She takes pride in her clothes like she takes pride in her coat.  
  
Alona digs into the shoebox stuffed full of stiff, dry makeup and tries again to figure out how the mascara wand works so that she can flutter her eyes like the girls that congregate in the bathrooms, pack among people. She accidentally stabs herself in the eye and decides that full, thick lashes are a conquest for another day.  
  
“Tell Jensen I said hi,” Katie snickers sleepily as Alona slips out of the room.  
  
She can smell Jensen’s candles down the hall –fresh linen, island sunshine breeze, orange peel, and spearmint she thinks, but she can’t be sure- and it only gets stronger when she sidles up to the open door, hand extended to knock against the frame preemptively.  
  
She catches a glance of the room before she can knock, though. Her first instinct is to turn around, walk back to her room, hit a reset button, and try the day again.  
  
Jensen’s sitting up in bed, looking a little confused like the world started moving without him, or like he started moving without the world, or like he actually moved without Alona having to tell him.  
  
Alona fits her hand over her mouth, quick as lightning, to catch any noise that might escape.  
  
It’s not like he’s up and dressed by himself or smiling or making sound or anything. Alona shouldn’t be getting excited. She shouldn’t be getting hopeful.  
  
“Jensen?” Her voice cracks.  
  
He looks up at her, that slightly bewildered expression intensifying.  
  
“Are you feeling okay?” she asks first. Maybe he’s sick. He’s sitting up because his stomach is cramping and any moment he’s going to heave gastric juices and the half slice of ham she’d stuffed into his mouth last night all over the bed spread before returning to his regularly scheduled broadcast.  
  
“I…” Jensen’s brow creases and he looks around the empty room. “I didn’t feel like staying in bed?” His voice lilts up, like it’s a question.  
  
Alona feels suddenly irrevocably out of her depth.  
  
She wants to run across the room and take Jensen’s face in her hands, scream and scream and scream until her voice gives out with demands about where the fuck he’s been, laugh and jump around, force him to dance with her right here in the middle of his empty bedroom with the candles on the desk.  
  
She can’t do any of that.  
  
She swallows down every word beating against the back of her teeth, praise and condemnations alike. She tucks her shaking hands into her pockets.  
  
He’s just sitting up in bed.  
  
It’s not a big deal.  
  
“That’s okay,” she says in a voice that’s a little too thick, but Jensen doesn’t seem to notice. “It’s time to get up for school anyway.”  
  
He nods slowly. He looks around the room again before getting up, like he’s dazed by the new perspective.  
  
He slips out of bed and Alona props herself against the doorframe to watch his muscles work under smooth, tan skin.  
  
It’s not that she’s never seen Jensen naked before –every day for the majority of her childhood and most days since- and it’s not that she’s even really attracted to him –he’s got a nice body, she’ll admit. Alona finds an odd sense of comfort in Jensen’s body, in a way not unlike the comforts she finds in folding herself into Danneel’s side at night, but at the same time it’s something bigger; something more.  
  
Jensen’s all easy glides and slow grace. He’s intent and simple when he moves, when he breathes. There’s no presentation to him. Nothing sharp or jagged. Like a river rock worn smooth and cold, Jensen’s an eighteen-year-old relic of Silvalopus. An antique left after the fires went out and everything else had changed. He’s Alona’s old home when he moves; not one of the snappish, squabbling pieces of the fractured pack that are left.  
  
The muscles in his back slide like creek water when he pulls a red Coca-Cola t-shirt with washed out letters over his head.  
  
He moves like a real wolf, Alona thinks. She feels like she has to hammer the human back into him.  
  
He bends to lace his boots, propping his foot on his bed; another new development for the morning. Alona’s sure those laces have been tied in the same knot for years.  
  
Alona beats down nervous, giddy giggles. It’s just shoelaces.  
  
Jensen straightens, turns, looks at Alona, takes her in for the first time that morning, the first time in months, and promptly pales.  
  
“What?” Alona recoils into herself slightly at Jensen’s stricken expression. “What’s wrong?” She looks down at herself frantically. There’s nothing on her shirt, her pants are clean, the jacket-  
  
The jacket.  
  
“Oh my god,” she gasps, hands flying to her mouth. “I’m so sorry, Jensen! I didn’t even realize! I never would have- if I’d known it was hers I wouldn’t have ever- let me just change!” She’s already halfway out into the hall, mentally berating herself with every curse she can think of, damning herself in the Moonlight for being such a fucking idiot, when a tug at her sleeve drags her back.  
  
Jensen’s not looking at her. He’s not touching her. He’s looking at her jacket, curling his fingers into the well-worn leather and feeling.  
  
“She bought it when I was six,” he mumbles so quietly Alona can barely hear him over the thunder of her own heartbeat. He rubs the dense leather between his fingers like he’ll be able to feel her on the jacket if he just searches enough. His knuckles graze Alona’s wrist accidentally and she holds her breath. “I thought it was the coolest thing. Told her she looked like Top Gun. I… I thought it burned.”  
  
His fingers stop and Alona catches the subtle shift in his breathing, scenting the jacket for a ghost.  
  
“I found it in a box,” Alona hazards speaking in a soft tone. Jensen opens his eyes wide and green, like he’s just realized she’s even there. “Maybe,” she swallows compulsively, throat clicking. “Maybe we could go through it later? See if there’s any more of your mother’s,” she fumbles the word on the edge of her throat, coughs, recovers. “Some of her stuff?”  
  
Jensen rolls the inner flesh of his lip between his teeth and starts to withdraw his grip. “Maybe,” he says.  
  
Alona drums her fingers against her thigh and presses her lips thin and tight to keep from smiling. He’s just talking. It’s not a big deal.  
  
-  
  
Alona stuffs a granola bar into his backpack today and Jensen thinks he should throw the apple out before it starts to smell and she realizes he never ate it.  
  
He walks the halls slowly, a trepidation welling within him the closer he gets towards the English room.  
  
Jensen doesn’t want to see him again. He doesn’t want to see any of the new bruises that might have cropped up overnight. He doesn’t want to see his clear eyes and unhindered smile.  
  
But if he skips class again he’ll get detention, and the classroom they use for detention doesn’t have any windows.  
  
He grits his teeth and pushes through the door, pointedly not even glancing at Jared as he stalks to his seat.  
  
He still smells like tobacco and dried blood and Jensen couldn’t have missed that if he were standing on the other side of the room with the air conditioning on, but he’s showered that morning too. He smells warm and bitter like cheap, strong soap. Jensen wonders how deep he’d have to bury his nose into Jared’s neck to get the real him, to understand what his skin smells like.  
  
The desk he sits in has two uneven legs on diagonal corners, leaving Jensen to rock between them every time he shifts his weight even slightly. When he sits down the desk creaks and balances on the front three legs and if by some blessing Jared hadn’t noticed him spirit into the classroom, he’d noticed him sit down.  
  
Jensen grits his teeth and wills to other boy not to say anything.  
  
“Hey.”  
  
Of course.  
  
Jensen cuts a glance out of the corner of his eye. Jared’s wearing another big sweatshirt that swallows up his wrists and his hips with big Texas Longhorns plastered wide across the chest and Jensen wonders if Jared knows just how far away Texas is.  
  
Jared smiles at him and the swelling in his lip and down his chin has gone down. He looks human again.  
  
Jensen doesn’t mean to stare, but he can’t stop imagining something –a fist, a book, a lamp- catching Jared across the face, staining his teeth red.  
  
“My brother,” Jared says, catching Jensen staring. He grins again, angles his chin up so that Jensen can get a better look like he’s proud of it or something. “It was just some rough housing, no worries.”  
  
Jensen glances down to Jared’s side where he’s still winging his left arm, but doesn’t say anything.  
  
“So, uh,” Jared persists, apparently intent on not letting his monologue die despite Jensen’s unwillingness to participate. “Your name’s Jensen, right?”  
  
Jensen wants to hurl himself at the window, break the glass, hit the ground rolling, shatter, reassemble, and sprint off into the woods.  
  
Since he can’t do that he meets Jared’s disarming smile and wide-open posture head-on and nods once.  
  
Jared’s smile gets so bright Jensen’s tempted to shield his eyes.  
  
“Yeah, I asked around about you. Sorry, I just feel like we got off on the wrong foot yesterday?” Jared’s hands and eyebrows move when he talks, like his entire body is in on the conversation. “I’m Jared.”  
  
Jensen feels that this is his cue to say something back. He opens his mouth, moves his tongue, wills words to spill out and into the conversation. Good words. He wants the right words to fall out of his mouth. Anything that will get Jared to stop talking to him and stop looking at him and take the stinging peppermint fragrance of the Bengay he probably smeared into his side to relieve the pain with him.  
  
“Jensen,” comes out in a grunt, like he’s some sort of Neanderthal and Jensen flushes because Jared already knew that, and Jensen already confirmed it. Jared smiles again but Jensen knows when he’s being humored. The desk rocks back onto the hind three legs when he turns to face forward, staring blankly down at the faux wood pattern.  
  
Jensen frowns down at the flat of his desk. He thinks that he used to be good at this. Two years ago he didn’t have problems talking to people.  
  
The bells rings shrilly and students shuffle in on thickly soled shoes to their seats and Mr. Hawthorne clears his throat and Jared pick-pick-picks at the corner of his desk again.  
  
“Hey, Jensen?” Jared calls gently. His voice is all smooth timbers and lilting tones.  
  
Everything inside of Jensen says a very plain ‘no’ when he considers turning back to Jared, and he advises himself just to ignore the other boy.  
  
He glances over and hates himself silently.  
  
“I like your boots.” Jared’s mouth slants upwards imploringly.  
  
Jensen curls his toes and angles his feet together, suddenly hyperaware of his own shoes. He has no illusions about his boots. They’re only kept together by worn leather, frayed thread, and a sheer force of will on his part.  
  
He tucks his legs up under the chair and the desk rocks back to the front.  
  
“Are you… making fun of me?” Jensen’s voice creaks with disuse.  
  
“What?” Jared physically reels, wincing and curling harder into his left arm. “No! I didn’t mean- I was just trying to-”  
  
“Mr. Padalecki,” Mr. Hawthorne snaps from the front of the classroom. He pronounces it Pad-a-leck-i again, only this time it isn’t quirky. “If you’re quite finished disrupting my class, I’d like to finish discussing Milton’s purpose.”  
  
The class chuckles indulgently and Jensen doesn’t have to look to know that Jared’s blushing now, too.  
  
“Sorry, sir,” he mumbles and ducks his head.  
  
Jensen spends the rest of class thinking about his boots and wondering if Jared’s given up on trying to coax conversation out of him.  
  
-  
  
The final bell rings and Jensen’s off like a shot, out the door of Mrs. Lewicki’s classroom so quickly that he thinks everyone else might pause and blink after him for a moment. The claustrophobia of the last hour of his life eases the suffocating clutch on his chest when he gets out into the hallway and he slows down, the immediate need to breathe muted now that the walls aren’t on top of him and he can see the woods through the small square windows in the doors at the end of the hall. The sweat on his neck won’t dry up completely until he gets home, though.  
  
He treks outside and tucks himself back into the alcove for door seven which opens into the drama hall. For the entire four months that they have after school rehearsals the door is abandoned for Jensen to loiter about to his heart’s content without fear of direct interruption.  
  
He scans the crowd of juniors and seniors heading out to the back parking lot, laughing and jostling loudly, for Alona stealthily, anxious to just get away from the accumulated body heat of the swamping crowd and the smell of human sweat and bitter car exhaust.  
  
The crowd has a mass heat and buzz about it with a thousand flailing limbs and hundreds of chorusing voices that are reaching new volumes in attempts to be heard over the others.  
  
His nostrils flare and he pushes himself deeper into the wall. She’s usually waiting for him here. Should he leave without her? Is this a test? Is he supposed to wait?  
  
Jensen stifles a whine. He doesn’t like this. He doesn’t like today. He wants to go home and get some sleep.  
  
He can wait, he guesses. Wait for them all to get in their cars and leave before he walks home alone if Alona doesn’t show up. Why isn’t she here, she’s always here, he doesn’t like this.  
  
The sound of them gets louder, some human girl shrilling a delighted shriek deep in the crowd and people laugh and cheer loudly and Jensen puts his hands over his ears and bares his teeth at them in silent snarl, breath starting to come choppy. He hates them, hates their smell, hates how many of them there are, hates how they’ve cornered him and they don’t even know it.  
  
Another laugh rises up in the crowd, booming like thunder and Jensen locks in on the source.  
  
Jared stands half a head taller than most of the crowd, even hobbled clutching at his side while gasping out that big laugh. There’s another boy with him who’s blond and short and talking animatedly with his face and his hands.  
  
“I love that movie!” Jared wheezes through his laughter, voice carrying.  
  
Jensen’s fingers slip down the side of his face as he stares.  
  
“And the part,” the other kid laughs, “Abby Someone! Abby Normal!”  
  
“You mean to tell me that I put an abnormal brain in the body of a seven foot monster?” Jared retorts, tone escalating and they both throw their heads back, howling with laughter until Jared’s eyes are watering and he’s breathless, holding onto his side tightly.  
  
Jensen feels inexplicably left out.  
  
“Young Frankenstein.”  
  
Jensen doesn’t so much startle as he switches abruptly from anxious to all out defensive, whipping around with teeth bared and tongue curled.  
  
“Whoa!” Michael holds up his hands in placation. “It just seemed like you needed a friend. Alona’s got to stay after to take a test or something and she told me to tell you to go ahead and head out without her.”  
  
Jensen eyes Mike, tracing over the lines of him in an attempt to gauge how serious he’s being before turning back to watch Jared wave away the other boy and unlock his car.  
  
“New kid?” Michael ducks in close to get Jensen’s view. “You know him?”  
  
Jensen shakes his head. “He sits next to me in English class.” He tracks the car all the way out of the lot. “He told me he liked my shoes.”  
  
“Yeah, well,” Michael snorts and claps him on the back so hard Jensen grunts and stumbles forward a half step. “Your shoes are shit.”  
  
Jensen snuffles out an exhale through his nose that wants to be a laugh but lacks the ambition.  
  
The silence that stretches between them is slightly uncomfortable. Jensen can’t remember the last time he had a one-on-one conversation with Michael, if this even counts as a conversation at all. Mostly they’re just shifting on their feet and waiting for the other to say something.  
  
“Young Frankenstein?” Jensen finally interrupts the discomfort.  
  
“The movie they were quoting,” Michael elaborates, jerking his head towards where Jared and the other boy had been. “Mel Brooks, Gene Wilder. You’ve seen it.”  
  
“No.” Jensen shakes his head. “I haven’t.”  
  
Michael closes his eyes, eyebrows climbing up his forehead as he cups a hand to his ear. “Pardon?” he asks blandly, voice strung tight over what Jensen thinks might be shock.  
  
Jensen blinks, confused about what could be so scandalous about him not having seen a film. “I’ve never seen-”  
  
“Unacceptable!” Michael bursts, drawing the attention of a few stragglers to their corner as he grabs Jensen’s wrist and walks away with it.  
  
Jensen stumbles after him, confused and lost.  
  
-  
  
The only shop that rents out movies left in town and potentially the entire state is on the other side of town. By the time Michael’s walked him there the sun is setting and darkness is bringing a chill that even catches the edges of Jensen’s ears.  
  
The rental place is brightly lit, though; a beacon in the twilight. A bell clangs when Michael muscles Jensen through the threshold and the entire place is seemingly deserted. The only other life form on the premises is the girl with the thick ring of eyeliner and metal stud punched through her nose manning the register, but she looks like she’d really rather be anywhere else in the entire world.  
  
Michael drags him down the aisles and builds a stack of films in Jensen’s arms that grows and grows in direct proportion with Michael’s offense at his lack of cinematic culture.  
  
Jensen keeps Young Frankenstein close, though. He tucks it up against his chest like someone might try and take it from him and then after they check out all fourteen videos and Michael continues to tirade about the travesty of Jensen having never seen The Blues Brothers Jensen slips the movie out of the bag and holds it on one hand the entire walk home.  
  
It’s odd, he thinks, that he’s holding something Jared loves in his hands. If he watches it and loves it, too, he and Jared will have something in common.  
  
Jensen wonders if Jared likes any of the movies that Michael picked out, too. He wonders what would happen if he quoted one of them. Would Jared laugh? Would he laugh like he had in the parking lot? Would he play along, dialogue with Jensen until the conversation splintered out into other shared interests.  
  
He’s too scared to ever try, but he wonders.  
  
-  
  
Alona is going to lose her mind.  
  
Sam has given up on trying to keep her in check and Rebecca may or may not be actively warning everyone away from the kitchen where she’s wearing down the floorboards with all of her pacing. She’s got her fingers knotted in her hair and the acid burn of tears building up behind her eyes, pushing closer and closer with each heaving breath she sucks down.  
  
She’s going to kill Michael and then she’s going to lose her mind.  
  
She had just had to stay after to take a test and given Michael the blaringly simple instruction to walk Jensen home in her stead and now, two and a half hours later, they were nowhere to be seen.  
  
Nightmare flashes of every horrible thing that could have happened –hit and run, kidnapping, hunters- flashes through her mind in shades of red and black and she might be hyperventilating.  
  
When the front door creaks open and Michael’s voice echoes through Alona practically vaults herself over the counter and hauls ass into the foyer.  
  
“Hey!” Michael greets with one of those wide, pleasant smiles that charm the girls at school but seem to have no effect on Alona because she’s about to fist her hand and put it down his throat far enough to get a good grip on his testicles and tear them out the long way until she catches sight of Jensen shuffling in through the door behind him. “We rented movies!” Michael exclaims and, lo and behold, Jensen has a plastic bag stuffed to the gills with DVD cases and one stray one that he’s holding closer.  
  
He looks like a little kid. Which is a ridiculous thing to think because Jensen’s long and lean like he doesn’t eat enough and works hard to never make eye contact with anyone while still keeping his chin up in a way that Alona has never seen any child try and emulate, but still. He clings to the one case with a tenacious desperation that reminds Alona immediately and absolutely of the way Gen used to cling to her stuffed rabbit when they were all pups.  
  
“Oh?” she says.  
  
“Yeah!” Michael grins. “Jensen go put one on!”  
  
Jensen stalks out towards the den and Alona watches him just long enough to make sure he’s out of ear-shot before slapping Michael.  
  
“Ow! Shit!”  
  
“ _Are- you- an- idiot_?” Alona demands, emphasizing each word with a slap before abandoning the pretense of an organized assault and raining blows down on him.  
  
“Christ, ‘Lona!” he squawks, shielding his head. “It was his idea!”  
  
“I seriously doubt that!” She hits him one last time for good measure.  
  
“Okay,” he concedes. “Not exactly his ‘idea’, but he brought it up!”  
  
She levels him with a dead look.  
  
“No, seriously!” Michael swears emphatically. “He was standing in the parking lot and watching the Padalecki kid fucking around with-”  
  
“Wait, who?” she interrupts.  
  
“Jared Padalecki,” he clarifies. “He just moved up here like last week. You might not have any classes with him. Real tall kid, longish hair, dresses like a homeless person.”  
  
Alona’s head tilts to the side, anger fading. “And Jensen was… watching him?”  
  
“Yeah.” He shrugs.  
  
“Huh.” Alona feels the creases in her brow. “What’d you guys get?”  
  
“A bunch of stuff.” He smiles again cheekily. “You know that Jensen’s never seen like… any good movies?”  
  
“When exactly did you think he sat down and marathoned all the Die Hards, dumbass?” She rolls her eyes at him and turns for the den.  
  
Jensen’s kneeling in front of the television, one hand braced on the carpet as he leans studiously towards the DVD player and it strikes Alona for the first time that he might not know how to work it. They’d never had any use for television in their childhood with the entire property of Silvalopus to be explored and in the transition from child to adult Jensen had never expressed any interest in technology outside of the bare essentials forced upon him in.  
  
“Do you need any help?” Alona asks cautiously.  
  
Jensen glances up over his shoulder and his lower lip is red and wet like he’d been fretting at it. “How do I turn it on?”  
  
Alona smiles, sad and fond all at once and drops to her knees next to him.  
  
Together they figure out how to get the player on and the disk in but Alona has no idea how to get the video on the television. She calls for Tom who tells her that Christian usually does that, who tells her that the cables are broken and probably Sebastian can fix it, who tells her that they need to buy new ones that Jeff could probably pick up on his way home from work, who drops them by about a half hour after this entire debacle began and now everyone is committed to see the film through.  
  
Jensen stakes his claim into the corner of the couch and Alona slips up next to him before anyone else. Michael flops down next to her and Tom on top of him. Jeffrey sprawls in the widest arm chair, rumbling seniority when Sebastian whines and sits on the floor at his feet, the chair as a back rest. Sam wanders in just when they hit play, refusing the chair when Jeff offers it to her and settles on the floor next to the couch. Alona’s not sure when Nikki, Jenna, and Robby showed up but they’ve implanted themselves in between her and Jensen, Nikki curled up in his lap with her nose tucked into her tail.  
  
Alona’s struck suddenly by how much she misses this, them, the pack. The nostalgia for these moments of togetherness that they all shared in her youth hits her with such a force she’s left breathless as the opening credits begin to roll.  
  
Through the first half hour or so of the movie –Young Frankenstein, which Alona’s heard of, but never seen, Michael must have picked it out- Gen and Katie and Adrianne wander in and heap together on the floor and Emily comes, searching for the little ones and ends up sticking around.  
  
They settle together, warm and safe.  
  
The movie is in black and white, which Alona hadn’t expected and takes a bit to get used to, but it’s very funny regardless.  
  
Fredrick Frankenstein –pronounced Fronk-en-steen- and Igor –Eye-gor, not Ee-gor.- -But they said it was Ee-gor.- -Well they were wrong, weren’t they?- and Inga, which is just pronounced Inga as far as Alona can tell, take the cart through the forest to the castle and everyone in the room seems delightfully immersed in their world until a wolf howls in the background of the scene.  
  
Everyone tenses minutely.  
  
 _“Werewolf!”_  Inga gasps.  
  
 _“Werewolf?”_ Worry rises in Fredrick Frankenstein’s expression.  
  
 _“There wolf.”_  Igor points off into the distance.  
  
The laugh bursts from Jensen’s mouth loud and bright, startling everyone. They all glance over at him, stunned to find the delighted smile on his face that’s slow to fade.  
  
Alona watches his face instead of the movie for a few moments and wonders what has been going through his head the last couple of days.


	3. Chapter 3

Alona had asked Jensen once why he hoarded candles and he hadn’t had any real answer for her. She knows that the conflicting smells give him headaches sometimes and that the combined heat of seventeen small fires makes him sweat through his sheets in the summer nights.  Still, though, when one burns down to the base Jensen mourns.

At first Alona had tried to encourage Jensen by buying him candles and taking them to him as little gifts at random intervals, like maybe she could convince him that there were still people who cared about him outside of his bedroom and they’d be willing to make him happy on a more consistent basis if he ever decided to step outside. However, after a few months and a handful of unlit candles she came to terms with the fact that Jensen was persnickety about his candles and instead a newer, better plan of action evolved.

“Hey,” Alona leans into Jensen’s doorway, one hand hooked on the frame. “Gen and I were headed to the mall; do you wanna come and pick up some candles?”

Jensen is on his side, curled facing the window to watch the snow sit high in the evergreens of the mountains in the distance.

“Jensen,” she calls.

“Yeah,” Jensen rasps, voice scratchy like laughing yesterday tore up his esophagus. “I’m up.”

The sheets rasp against his skin as he twists and Alona stands by passively and watches him dress in dark jeans with faded knees that are just a shade too tall and tight for Jensen’s legs, folding up underneath his heels as he pads to the mound of clothes piled in the desk chair. He pulls on a black t-shirt that has been worn so thin and stretches so tight against Jensen’s chest that it’s practically transparent. He pulls on his boots and shrugs on his jacket and Alona shoots him a grin when he turns towards her before peeling away from the doorframe and leading the way.

Jensen glances at the office door on their way out, but Alona jerks him out the door before he can really get to lingering.

Genevieve is waiting just outside the door and only awkwardly fumbles for a moment when she realizes that Jensen is going with them, but quickly falls into step as they make down the street.

“So,” Genevieve starts, voice lilting and eyes searching for some subject to kindle a conversation with. She looks to Alona, eyes wide and pleading, mouth held in a stiff little frown.

For what it’s worth Jensen doesn’t ever seem to notice that he’s the catalyst for mass conversation extinction, too busy staring at the track of sidewalk his feet are eating up.

Alona gives Gen an encouraging smile, mouthing ‘ _say anything, he doesn’t bite.’_

Gen still looks lost, though. Her eyes shift guiltily from Jensen to the horizon and back again.

Saturdays have always been their days for adventuring. Maybe Jensen has forgotten and maybe Gen isn’t committed, but Alona remembers prowling the grounds of Silvalopus, free for the weekend from homeschooling and excited to play fight in the tall grass. She remembers chewing on Jensen’s ears and pulling on Genevieve’s hair but apparently she’s the only one.

They’re all still the same people they were before. Just older.

She sighs, breath foggy in front of her.

They walk the forty five minute trek to the other side of town in silence.

The mall isn’t impressive or sprawling the way that the shopping centers on the shows Danneel likes to watch are. It’s compact and only has a handful of real attractions. The good stuff is a county over, only a couple of minutes longer by car but this one suits their needs just fine. It even has a Yankee Candle.

“Do you want to go get your candles first or come with Gen and me to pick out some new clothes and get them on our way out?” Alona asks as they head in through the East doors.

Jensen glances at her; dawning confusion in his eyes like this is some brand new plan instead of the same proposal she gives him every time they head out here. “Couldn’t we just split up and meet back here?”

Alona has to glance to Genevieve to make sure they’re both hearing the same thing.

“Uh,” she stammers. “Yeah. We can do that?” Her voice lilts up like she’s asking a question. Gen shrugs. What a great help.

“Okay.” Jensen nods vaguely. “I’ll find you guys when I’m done.”

Alona feels like there should be further ceremony –maybe she should kiss his forehead and tuck his shirt in or something first- before Jensen turns and leaves, but there isn’t.

“Is he…” Genevieve watches after him with Alona. “Is he gonna be okay? Like, on his own?”

Alona sure hopes so.

-

The Yankee Candle shop is on the upper level, tucked into a back corner above an athletic wear store and Jensen legitimately has no idea how it hasn’t gone out of business yet except maybe the sheer influx of money from him as a consumer is keeping it afloat. They must be doing well, though. There’s usually another person or two milling about when Jensen’s there and last time he had passed through they had been hiring.

There’s a homey sense of organization to the store: wide walls stacked high with colored candles in lidded jars with conservative labels, shelved islands of free-floating candles in pastels, and a general meshed fragrance of sweet wax and the churning of air by moving bodies.

He moves through the shop blindly, the layout already memorized, and indulges in the smells of the candles. He prefers the jarred candles. He likes how they can be sealed off, bottled inside and preserved.

The spring scents –the honeysuckles, the ocean breezes, the fresh mints- have been tucked away into a corner and the winter ones –the pine needles, the pumpkin pies, the apple ciders- are on full display and Jensen peruses to his heart’s content, plucking a couple off the shelf and giving them cursory sniffs that make him recoil almost every time with their intensity. Too much smell in one place, even with the good smells.

He settles on another Fresh Linen one to add to his small Fresh Linen congregation at the corner of his desk as well as a few newer ones like Garden Sweet Pea and Hazelnut Coffee that he’s pretty sure will grow on him in a couple of weeks.

He’s walking for the register and juggling the candles when a new display catches his eye.

Man Candles. Like candles are an exclusively feminine indulgence and to even begin to appeal to a more masculine audience there should be an ironic subsection dedicated to ‘manly’ smells.

Jensen snorts under his breath at the title and takes a step closer to read their labels.

2 x 4, Riding Mower, First Down; they’re ridiculous.

A small, genuinely amused smile curves at his lips as he leans in to read and, really, he should know better than staying so still for so long near the front of the shop.

“Oh, sweetie!”

Jensen startles, nearly dropping a candle.

“I’m so sorry, honey,” the woman says quickly, sincerely. “I didn’t even see you come in, I would have greeted you at the door. You’re always so quiet.”

Jensen thinks her name is Madeline or Caroline or Beth or something. All he really knows is that she works here on weekends and thinks he should eat more.

“Still so skinny,” she crosses her arms over her chest and tuts, looking him over.

“Sorry,” Jensen mutters, not sure what else to do.

“Do you need help finding anything?” she asks, twisting her hair over her shoulder with one hand. If Jensen had to guess he would say that she was in her early thirties maybe; not naturally proportioned to be considered truly lovely and unable to employ makeup in any way that would work in her favor to push her over that edge from plain to eye-catching the way she obviously thinks she wants to be when she smiles. She isn’t smiling coquettishly for him, Jensen understands. He’s too young for her to be actually interested and he wonders if she practices being sweet like this on customers or if she, so unlike himself, is just naturally blessed and cursed with caring. She’s shorter, likes to braid her hair, Jensen could probably sink his teeth straight through her neck if he wanted to.

He shakes his head.

“Ready to check out?” She smiles a megawatt grin, little nose wrinkling up and eyes twinkling because she doesn’t know who she’s talking to.

He nods and follows her to the front and Jensen guesses they did find work after the posting because there’s a broad back hunched behind the register instead of Madeline-Caroline-Beth working the front by herself and it’s only when he straightens up that Jensen regrets every decision he’s made today that lead him to this point.

“Jensen, hey!” Jared smiles, the scab in his lip nearly healed all the way up and the purple down his chin faded to a dull green, and Jensen takes a faltering step backwards right into Caroline.

Jensen feels as if his territory has been encroached upon; something he has claimed indefinably and undeniably as his own violated by a near stranger and the break in the simple pattern of his life makes his fingernails ache and the joints of his knuckles creak imperceptibly.

“You two know each other?” Madeline asks, delighted.

“Uh…” Jensen stammers.

“School.” Jared grins and leans forward, palms braced against the counter and Jensen tracks the tremor in his side.

“Oh?” Beth grins slyly. “Jensen here is our best customer. Comes in every other week like clockwork, so you’ll see him around. Usually his girlfriend is with him, though. Where’d she get to today?”

A strange expression crosses over Jared’s face and Jensen wishes to the Moon that he was practiced enough in reading other people that he could understand what that raised brow and thin mouth means.

“I- I don’t,” he stutters out quickly, glancing from Jared to Beth-oline and back again like he’s defending himself. “I don’t have a girlfriend. Alona, she’s my cousin.”

“Oh.” Madeline blushes.

The moment stretches out silently and Jensen starts to shift uncomfortably on his feet, back of his neck prickling with uneasiness.

“Do you want me to wrap those?” Jared cuts the awkwardness with a crooked smile, clearly amused.

Jensen nods deftly and Carol-Mad-eth ducks into the back of the store, cheek still stained pink.

Jared laughs under his breath and shakes his head as his scans Jensen’s candles and Jensen shifts restlessly.

He opens his mouth and wills anything that isn’t ‘I watched that movie’ to come out and gets, “I didn’t know you worked here,” for his troubles.

“Yeah,” Jared shoots him a soft, understated smile. “This was pretty much the only place in town that was hiring. Well, I mean, here and Cantina D’Italia. I bus tables there after I get off here.”

“Oh,” Jensen says, for lack of a better reply.

Jared smiles faintly to himself as he wraps Jensen’s candles efficiently.

“Your total is 49.29, sir,” Jared says with exaggerated politeness and another smile spasms across Jensen’s lips.

He digs into his pocket for the bills that Alona allotted him from the joint pack account. Jensen supposes if he were inclined to delve into his allowance he might have accumulated enough over the past two years of doing next to nothing to buy all the candles he wanted.

He makes a mental note to check his bank account as he passes over three twenties.

He makes another mental note as Jared counts off his change that checking bank accounts is exhausting and he’s not actually going to do it.

“Would you like your receipt in the bag?” Jared asks as he reaches over to pass Jensen his remaining ten dollars and seventy one cents.

Jensen nods once shallowly and reaches to receive his change. He takes the bills but Jared fingertips prod at the very center of his palm, tracing splayed little sunbeams of warmth as he drops the coins and Jensen blinks.

There’s no electric shock or outstanding spread of warmth through Jensen’s hand up into his arm. Jared’s hands are cold, actually: a trait of poor circulation or the lack of adjustment to the Vermont climate, maybe. The small trace of physical contact does sink into his skin with a certain unfamiliarity that comes with the abstinence from touch for an extended period, though. Jensen feels like the touches are painted on him and if he were to look down at his hand he could see the lines in pink and yellow.

He folds his fingers over his palm and lets his hand hang by his side.

When Jared grins and holds out the bag Jensen takes it with his other hand.

-

Jensen sits on the floor of his bedroom cross-legged with his bare back towards the open door, two clawed fingers digging deep into one of the burned out candle jars.

Macintosh is one of his favorites and the red candles seem to burn out faster than most of the others. It’s okay, though; he bought a new one.

He scoops the remnants of the candle out of the jar, claws cutting though the stiffness of cold wax easily and scraping harshly against the glass of the bottom as he works to hollow out the jar. The wax wedges up deep underneath his fingernails, rimming red like bloodstains. His hands are going to smell like apples for days.

His knees pop when he crawls the short length to his closet to put the empty jar into the Empty Jar Graveyard 2.0 box that lives there. The first Empty Jar Graveyard is stowed in the attic, taped up over the bulge of a small glass mountain.

After a year and a half of burning through candles the spent corpses had started to pile up, spilling out of his closet any time he tried to pull out clothes until one day Alona suggested tossing them out.

Jensen had hauled the box up to the attic himself the next time everyone else left for the full moon, taping frantically as his bones creaked in the moonlight to keep them all safe and secure in a world of uncertainty.

He runs his fingers over the cold glass of the dozen and a half empty jars littering the bottom of the box that takes up the corner of his closet space, claws clicking over the curves as his fingers fall across each jar and leaving fine gouges through the labels.

He can’t imagine tossing them out just because they’re empty.

The tapered edges of his claws sink back into the blunt ends of his nails as he closes the closet door.

He unloads the Yankee Candle bag silently, only pausing for a shameful half a second to duck his head into the newsprint wrapping the glass jars to see if he can pick up some trace of Jared’s skin. The fragrant wax drowns out any other scents, though. Jensen bows his head, feeling ridiculous and sets up the candles on the desk without fanfare.

There are seven boxes of matches in the top drawer of the desk and two extra strike pads that he received for being an outstanding Yankee Candle customer. Jensen grabs one box blindly and burns through seventeen sticks lighting up all of his candles.

They exude fragrance and light and heat that touches at Jensen’s senses and he smiles softly to himself. The smile lingers as he crawls his way into bed, laying on his stomach with his chin propped up on his folded hands so he can watch them burn.

-

Jensen wakes up sharply, pawing at his face to rid himself of whatever annoyance it was that roused him from his sleep. He sneezes shortly at the thin, abrasive smell filtering through his air; the ghost of bitterness flitting in through his open window. Finding nothing immediately outstanding that might have awoken him he blinks and looks around blearily, eyes puffy and unfocused with sleep –the good, deep kind that doesn’t want to let you go when the sun comes up. And the sun has indeed come up.

Jensen hisses and falls out of bed in the scramble to shield his eyes from the intensity of the mid-morning sun slating directly into his face through the window. He writhes for a moment, cursing the audacity of the sun and huffing his displeasure into the floor before his eyes finally adjust and he can begrudgingly acknowledge that it’s a beautiful day outside.

He yawns, jaw popping, and pulls on some boxers before shuffling downstairs to join the clamor of the morning.

Steam billows up from the pot seated on the stove in the kitchen, bathing the hand stirring the long stemmed wooden spoon through whatever was boiling in thick curtains of obscurity. With her other hand she tucks her long, loose hair behind her ear and angles a bright smile Jensen’s way.

“’Morning,” she greets.

“’Morning, mama,” he returns, nuzzling briefly against her warm back as he passes behind her to get to the fridge. She smells like the sweet summer grass of the season and clean dirt, like she’s part of the earth that walks and talks. “Where’s dad?” he asks as he pries open the refrigerator and gropes for the orange juice.

The clock on the oven reads 11:49 and Jensen frowns to himself when he catches a glimpse of it. His winter coat may have shed in spring there’s still a discomfort surrounding high noon in summer. It’s too hot and bright and there’s too much space between Jensen and the Moon. Noon makes Jensen feel weak.

“He’s down by the river. They’re hauling out the tree that fell during the storm.” Her dress is blue and it swirls around her knees when she sways to the birdsong.

Jensen mood dips. “Oh.”

“I told him not to wake you up,” she informs him pointedly with a stern but compassionate mother-knows-best look. “You’ll get your chance to haul trees and fix roofs and kill turkeys for thanksgiving soon enough, baby.”

“I’m not a puppy anymore,” Jensen huffs. “I can help. I want to help.”

“You think the responsibility sounds like fun now,” she laughs lightly. “Just you wait. It isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Your father has a lot of weight on his shoulders. Be a kid for as long as you can.”

“I’m not a kid,” he grouses and she laughs again.

Jensen snorts out a huff and in breathing in again he catches that same bitter, abrasive scent that caught him this morning.

He sniffs again, nostrils flaring as he tries to trigger some memory identity.

“What is it?” She shoots him an amused look and scents with him.

“Is that… gasoline?” His eyebrows scrunch together, creasing in the center.

She purses her lips. “Honey, I don’t-”

The crack that interrupts her is deafening, echoing through Silvalopus with such force and prestige that Jensen initially mistakes it for thunder.

“Mama?” For all of Jensen’s earlier protests he still sounds like the puppy that came running for his mother’s skirts when Sebastian pushed him down into the creek when he was six. Cold, subdued panic licks up his spine, frosting up his nerve-endings and numbing his body.

She stares out the window and Jensen can see the fine hairs across the shoulders he had just butted his cheek against affectionately stand on end, getting thicker.

“Mom?”

Another thunderclap, closer this time and Jensen realizes for the second time that morning that the skies are clear and the sun is bright.

“Jensen!” she snaps through jagged teeth, hands on his shoulders and nails digging into his back. “Jensen, go get the little ones! Take them- take them to the cars, get them out of here!”

The urgency of her tone tells Jensen he’s far out of his depth, too young and stupid and naive to wrap his head around the situation or the thunder or what she’s just asked of him.

“Mom?” His voice cracks.

There’s a sound to fire starting, a dull sort of flaring roar of gasoline igniting and flames licking at the air hungrily. Jensen can hear it, starting somewhere outside, zipping through the accumulated fumes, chewing its way around the perimeter of the building. It pops and hisses, smells metallic and awful, and Jensen whines frantically.

“Now, Jensen! Go!”

The third thunderclap is mixed with a scream and Jensen runs like he’s never run for anything before in his life.

The flames are hungry and they chase at him with smoke and heat as he sprints to the playroom.

“Jensen!” Kristen gasps when he hits the door to the puppies’ room, face stiff with a forced calm that’s all show for the three toddlers whining their confusion at the sounds and smells of the new world they’re about to be introduced to. “Jensen, what’s-”

“We need to go,” he grits his teeth into the words to keep the panic down. “Now.”

She nods quickly and gathers the children closer. “Hey, guys, we’re all gonna follow Mr. Jensen outside for a little bit, okay?” she says to the little ones in a tone that is manic calm personified, nodding like she’s agreeing with herself.

The windows in the playroom had been painted over intentionally to keep wayward children from ever accidentally tumbling out. A safety precaution that’s sealing them into the room as the smoke filters in through the cracks in the door.

He carves at the window, paint chips curling away and loading up under his fingernails as he pries and sweats.

“Jensen,” Kristen mutters, muted panic tight in her tone and drumming through her fingers as she clutches the three silently crying children to her chest and watches the smoke leak in. Her hair sticks to her face with sweat, in her eyes as she blinks away the burning.

“I’m going!” Jensen barks, clawing frantically. One of the little ones heaves out a sob like a retch.

It’s a crackle, a roar, hungry and pressing up against the door. It fills Jensen’s lungs with smoke and his head with static, skin beading with sweat as he scrabbles against the paint to the tune of coughing and crying.

“Jensen!”

“Fuck it!” he shouts and puts his fist through the glass, knuckles reinforced by the supernatural tension in his muscles.

Someone’s screaming and Jensen’s hand is bleeding and warped by the shift and shattered bone but he continues, baring his shoulder into the glass and snarling as the jagged edges cut into his contorting muscles. His jaw cracks on a snarl and the colors of the world fade into shades of grey and shadowy hues as his eyes shift from human to animal.

“Come on,” he grunts out, voice guttural and distorted by his teeth.

He helps Kristen duck out the window first, glass on the window ledge cutting into his stomach as he leans out over the edge to help lower her to the ground. The drop from the farthest stretch of Jensen’s hands to the grass below is still a decent distance and Kristen hits it in a sprawl.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” she coughs.

The oppressive heat of the is closing in on them, baking hot like an oven and the duality of the warm breeze beating at Jensen through the window and the muzzy heat waves filtering in through the door to the direct left of him is making him light-headed.

“Come on,” Jensen ushers at the huddled children, like his shepherding tone is incentive enough for them to take any step closer to the broken glass and smell of fire.

Jensen doesn’t think about how it’s probably underneath them, too. Burning away at the first floor through open space right under their feet and it’s going to come up through the floorboards any second now and eat them up.

“Nikki,” he says roughly, singling out the little blond girl in the front wringing her hands into the hem of her blue denim dress. “Come here,” he pleads, holding out his arms.

She detaches from the other two reluctantly, breathing through her mouth heavily as she traipses the short line between the corner of the room and Jensen with hesitant steps. Jensen’s beckoning becomes increasingly more frantic until she’s close enough that he can just snatch her up.

She struggles and screams just as soon as he scoops her up, little hand pressed hard into the side of his face as he threads her out the window, careful that she doesn’t touch any of the glass.

“It’s okay, Nik,” Kristen calls with her hands cupped around her mouth so she can be heard over the sucking roar of the fire coming for them. “Let go when Mr. Jensen says so, okay? I’ll catch you!”

Vertigo twists at Jensen’s perception of reality as he leans out the window, arms straining with the wriggling weight of the little girl.

Nikki kicks and sobs, screaming, “No! No!” as she writhes.

“Nikki, stop!” Jensen pants, the sweat of his skin robbing any friction that would have allowed him to keep a decent grip on the little girl through her thrashing. “Nicole!”

She dangles from his hands, nothing but feet of smoky air between her feet and Kristen’s outstretched hands.

“Come on,” Kristen goads, waving him forward.

“Nikki,” Jensen coughs, gagging on smoke. She’s slipping through his hands, fingers thick, slick, and useless. “Nik, come on, let go. It’s time.”

“No,” she cries. Her little fingers bite into his forearms.

“Sorry, kiddo.” He runs out of runway to cling with and she slips out of his hands.

She screams and tumbles right into Kristen’s outstretched arms and Kristen rolls with her momentum, pulls the kid into her stomach as they fall together to the ground.

“I’m okay!” Kristen rasps up, holding Nikki close. “Jennifer next!”

“Jenna,” Jensen calls.

Jenna goes easier, hardly kicking at all when Jensen leans her out the window. Gritty glass dust grinds into his stomach, going pasty with the blood and he can feel her heart beating frantically against his bicep.

“On three,” he coaches. “One, two-”

Kristen takes fifty pounds of screaming toddler straight to the chest, bowing out again under the assault.

“Stay with Nikki, Jen,” Kristen instructs on a wheeze. “We’re almost out of here.”

“Robby,” Jensen grates thinly, voice wrecked by the lack of oxygen in the small room, like he’s being pulled into a vacuum of heat. “Come on, buddy, it’s just you.”

The little boy pulls away from the wall shyly, hands folded up under his chin.

He doesn’t make a sound when Jensen hauls him out the window and lets go but Kristen wheezes when she catches him, coughing.

Alone with the smoke, Jensen takes a half a second to psych himself out; bouncing on the balls of his feet and shaking out his arms like the tension of contemplating jumping out of a window is just going to leave him. He can’t just leap into Kristen’s arms. The fire is coming, closing him in, cornering him deeper in the room with every second he stalls. It’s waiting to eat him up, burn him alive, sear his flesh off his bones and then blacken those to ash.

“Don’t think, just go,” he tells himself thinly, smoke crackling in his lungs and suffocating him from the inside out. “Don’t think, just-”

The fall is cold. Cold panic, cold air rushing past him and licking at the sweat streaking down his temples and torso, brushing through his clumped hair and whispering across his scalp. He doesn’t see the sky or the ground, just the air.

His heart doesn’t beat until he hits the ground, rolling and screaming as his knee and shoulder hit at the same awkward angle at the same time. Something pops and splinters, but it might be the fire.

“Hey, you’re okay, you’re okay,” Kristen mutters frantically, hands fluttering all over him for a few short seconds before she’s turning back to the children and barking, “Get to the trees and wait!”

Jensen’s vision swims and his stomach rebels. Her hands are all over him, gliding across his over-heated skin and he snaps at her to warn her back before he’s coughing up bile into the grass. Once the coughing starts it doesn’t want to stop and Jensen coughs and coughs until he’s really throwing up, body rolling into the heave and the gashes in his stomach protesting at the movement even as he curls up on the side of his body that isn’t completely fucked now.

Kristen’s hauling him upright, ducking under his arm and taking the majority of his weight. Jensen screams when he tries to settle weight on his leg and Kristen supports both of them with shuttering steps, Jensen more hopping than limping until she’s just dragging his useless mass away from the oppressive heat of the house.

His head rolls on his neck, world swirling and colors smearing until he’s looking up at the clear blue sky. It’s sunny today. The birds are singing, there isn’t a cloud in the sky, Jensen’s house is on fire, and there’s stomach acid in his sinuses.

“Stay with me,” Kristen chastises as he starts to slip away. “Talk to me, stay aware.”

“I’m slowing you down,” Jensen slurs, tongue thick. “You have to leave me, Kris-“

“Jensen, stop it, I’m not going to-”

“Listen!” he snaps, shaking his head so hard something covered in soot and tar dislodges and he can focus, awareness filtering back in with the clean air. “Get the kids, get down to the river, my dad’s there. Tell him what’s going on.”

“What is going on, Jensen?”

“Hunters,” Jensen answers shortly. Fucking hunters.

She leaves him under a tree with the coarse pattern of the bark pressing hard into his back, far enough away from the house that nearly every breath he can suck down is smoke-free. She presses a hard kiss to his forehead before dashing off without a goodbye. No goodbyes. Goodbyes are too formal. Goodbyes are too permanent.

He leans his head back into the trunk of the tree, bleeding sticky sheets of red down his chest, and closes his eyes against the sunlight and doesn’t think about the ashes of his life, the gunshots, the people that he might never see again. His body aches, inside and out. His lungs burn and his wrist throbs but it’s going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay.

In fact, things might already be okay for all Jensen knows. He hasn’t seen the fields or the front of the house. He doesn’t know anything about the coops or the stalls. He doesn’t know how many there were. The problem might already be done, nipped in the bud with teeth and claws and now someone is coming to find him and tell him that everything is going to be okay. He hasn’t heard anyone howling, and there could be reasons for that other than the reluctance to give away their position.

A gunshot echoes off in the distance, humbling in the absolute vastness of its sound, and Jensen whimpers.

“Alpha is coming,” Jensen recites like prayer to himself and the sunlight. Alpha will know what to do.

The scream tears through Jensen’s chest like he’s made out of the thin tissue paper they stuff bags with down in town, pretty but flimsy, and the shrill horrified sound is much closer than the gunshot. Jensen can hear the mad scramble of dirt being kicked up under feet, frantic panting coming towards him before the footfalls are cut out by the sound of a body falling heavily to the earth and then another, hoarser scream, messy scrambling of someone crawling on their belly.

“There you are, girl.”

Jensen crawls towards the voice with his belly scraping twigs and leaves that catch and drag at the open tears of his body, smearing dirt into his cuts because he can’t get himself really upright on one good hand and one good knee. He keeps his jaw locked up tight enough that his bared teeth creak in protest to keep his groans behind his tongue and he crawls, like a worm on the ground, towards the clearing where the little ones play in the autumn when the leaves rain down and they can nip at the air and dance under the watchful eye of whoever is on sitting duty.

Alona's screaming still despite her voice being a rasped husk in her throat, curled up small, naked and pale between the thick, twisted roots of a tree where the puppies nap in the cooler afternoons with her hands braced in the air in front of her like they're going to stop the man standing tall over her or the silver bullets loaded in his gun.

Jensen doesn't think, he just moves.

The shattered bones of his knee grate together when he leaps and shifting feels like swallowing razor blades into his marrow, but Jensen does it. His muscles cramp up into tight bunches and rip straight down the center mid-air, tension coiling tight and then snapping, tearing right through his skin and scrambling up his bones, fragmented pieces jostling and setting off center and out of place but Jensen forges ahead with bared teeth.

He hits the man in the side as a giant, snarling animal and the man shouts out. They both go down hard, Jensen on top even though the topple jostles him up in a bad way. There are sharp, broad knees digging with the force only a creature on the brink of extinction can muster, tenacious and reckless into the gashes of his stomach, Jensen's blood seeping into the denim of the stranger's jeans and the stranger's blood staining Jensen's teeth and claws and he tears and snaps. There's a voice that Jensen can hear far off, screaming his name, but there's a louder voice right underneath him, cursing his existence, calling him a dumb, stupid, dirty fucking abomination. An animal.

Flesh and fabric are ribbons to Jensen. Heavy boots kick at his stomach, catch a splinter of broken bone accidentally and Jensen barely flinches, doesn't even yelp.

The man flails with that same grasping desperation to cling to the tendrils of his own life even as they’re slipping from between his fingers and down Jensen’s gullet, reaching for something; a gun, a knife, Jensen's death.

His mind is off-line, body moving of its own volition. The knife arches down, glimmering through the snatches of sunlight permeating the leaves high above and buries deep into Jensen’s back with a hollow sort of sound; glancing off the bone of his ribs and vibrating through his skeleton, and Jensen hears it but he doesn’t even feel it because his entire existence has been narrowed down to his teeth and the way they slice through the yielding flesh of the man’s neck.

It’s not the sweet meat of spring rabbit.

Arterial blood gushes hot, black, and bitter down Jensen’s throat, flooding his tongue and clogging up his senses so that the only thing he can smell is harsh organic iron and the only thing he can see is red and the only thing he can taste is life’s blood and the only thing he can hear is the shallow gurgle of struggling breaths.

The heartbeat underneath Jensen’s forepaw loses momentum as each beat pumps down Jensen’s throat. The heartbeat of a man who came to Jensen home and set fire to his life, bringing silver and blood with him.

Jensen clenches his jaw harder. The growl starts in his chest and rumbles out of his throat, gooey and burbling through the swamp of blood clogging up his nose. He has never in his life owned something more than this.

“Jensen.”

His body stays rigid in formation but his eyes cut a glance off to the side. Alona shuffles closer on her knees, head ducked down in subservience as she crawls through the red mud, edging closer.

“He’s gone, Jensen,” she whispers, voice hoarse. “Let it go.”

The growl fades out of him in gradual stages, but it fades all the same.

His teeth have burrowed deep trenches into the stranger’s neck and he has to wrench against the soft suction of raw, wet muscle. He’s middle aged; late thirties, early forties maybe. He has wet pink hair that Jensen figures is stark, white blond when dry. There’s a burn scar on his neck with deep, black holes from Jensen’s teeth punched through it that disappears under his collar and Jensen wonders how he got it, if his home went up in flames too. There’s a gold band on his left ring-finger.

Short, furred toes crack, bones distort, and fur fades away like the tide going out and Jensen sits: naked, pink, dumbfounded, dirty, and hurt; aching in a way that he didn’t even know was possible.

“Hold still,” Alona instructs and Jensen has half a mind to ask her what she’s doing before the pain rips through his side, hot and sudden as she tears the knife out of him.

“Son of a bitch!” he screams, clutching at the wound, no longer numbed by adrenaline as the open air assaults the gaping hole in his body. He can feel his own flesh sizzling with silver poisoning under his fingers, blood thick and coagulating under his nails in torrential sluices of scalding, wet heat as he claws at the burn like if maybe he can tear the hurt out it will help, but his fingers go numb and useless quickly with the contact and Alona pins his hands away as he writhes. “Oh, holy fuck!” Jensen sobs out the words and arches like he can get away from his own skin, spine bowing up so hard that his shoulders pop and the scabs that had begun to form over his stomach tear back open and soil his flesh further.

He’d heard stories about silver and seen a few weathered scars that were long like gashes but textured like burns, but he’s never had the distinct dis-fucking-pleasure of experiencing it firsthand. He couldn’t even have imagined it, doesn’t have words.

It’s deep, deep inside of him and he can feel the sluggish progression of inferno burrowing in deeper to his systems, dogged like a parasite. A vampire. When he starts coughing up blood he’s not sure whose it is.

“Jensen,” Alona grabs at his shoulder, hauling at his dead weight with the hand she doesn’t have tangled with his one still useful one. “We have to go,” she insists desperately. “We have to find some others.”

“They’re gone,” Jensen laments, wheezing through heavy, wet panting into the muddy, bloody mess he made. “Scattered or-” he gasps for air wetly, back flexing, stomach twitching, “or dead.”

“Don’t say that,” she sobs and clutches him closer even while he shouts out agony. “Alpha will come.”

“He’ll be too late.” Jensen’s chest hitches and his eyelids start drooping even as he stays fixated on the empty shell of a life he took. “No way- there’s no way.”

“He won’t! He’ll call and they’ll come and we’ll chase them out!” Her palms find his face and force his eyes away from the mangled corpse. “We’re going to survive,” she swears emphatically with trembling lips and red eyes.

“We don’t even know how many of them there are.” Jensen huffs a bitter, exhausted laugh and feels cold except for the burning; pitying her for her hope and naivety with the empty place inside of his chest that aches when he breathes. Cold in his back and knee and stomach, cold inside, cold out. Tired. Tired and cold.

“Thirteen,” she says quickly, leaning in closer to his space like the sheer force of her proximity could convince him to cling to life. She presses in harder on Jensen’s hand and the gash underneath and Jensen groans pathetically. “I counted.”

“Twelve,” Jensen mutters numbly, cheek down in sticky grass.

Old, wet leaves crush off to their left and Jensen can barely muster the energy to swivel his head on the ground and bare his teeth preemptively.

Jeff paces forward slowly, oddly calm like he’s in the eye of the hurricane that everyone else is being wrecked by. Sunlight glances off the slick sweat plastering his hair down the back of his neck. His eyes are deep and dark and feral, observing the scene of Alona, Jensen and the slab of meat coolly as he treads deeper into the clearing. Blood streaks down his chest, dark red against the tan of him as it slips down the solid muscle of his thighs and pools in the notch of his collarbone.

“Nine,” he says, red lips and red teeth.

“Nine,” Jensen repeats. His mind starts up again, purring like an old engine coming to life. Nine. Nine. Nine’s not so bad. Not that he and Jeff and Alona alone could take nine, but if he could get Mark or Sean or Casey all in one place at one time, they could do enough damage. They could hunt them down through the cloudy smoke and overwhelming smell of char and chase them out.

“My dad. We need my dad.” Jensen wipes at his mouth with his good hand and tries to organize his stiff limbs, smearing blood down his forearm. Alona’s hands are under his arms, helping him sit up against the tree and he grunts his thanks and displeasure and goes a little dizzy for a moment.

“If the smoke hasn’t gotten to him yet-” Jeff starts, staring off in the direction of the river.

“I sent Kristen to go get him,” Jensen cuts in quickly, coughing. “Her and the little ones.”

“Kids are gonna slow her down.” Jeff shakes his head. “There’s not gonna be enough time. They’re already combing through the forest, hunting down everyone who took off when the fire started.”

Seeing as how Jensen’s split second decisions so far haven’t been award winning he thinks he should probably take a moment to really evaluate his position before committing to a gamble of all their lives, should take an introspective moment to consider the big boy pants he’s about to try and pull on, but he doesn’t really. He just moves.

Lungs expanding, ribs bowing, throat and esophagus twisting, Jensen throws back his head and howls, giving everyone in the valley his exact position, a promise.

“They’ll come.” Alona nods to herself as her eyes shift. “They’ll all come.”

Jeff’s spine bows, bends, snaps, cracks, elongates and whips, and then he howls with Jensen, long and loud. Alona chimes in, soprano to their baritone.

Across the valley another desperate howl rises up into the smoggy air. Jensen sucks down a breath and howls it out again and the chorus rises all around them, symphony sending the birds from their perches and ringing from the treetops in the sun’s light.

They come. They all come.

It’s nearly anticlimactic in the sense that Jensen doesn’t even have to scrape himself off the ground. He can hear the snarls and the gunfire and the screaming throughout the forest. He can hear the thundering of running and the harsh panting of wolves intermingling with the short, sharp grunts of men.

They come, but only the wolves cross the finish line.

They’re all bloody and soot-streaked, morose and panicked as they crowd into the clearing. They blather questions in tight voices, asking for sisters, brothers, spouses and children.

“Should we go back?” Rachel asks. The black smears of soot on her face have clear streaks of clean skin cut down her cheeks. “Are we going home?”

“Where’s Neil?”

“Did the chickens make it?”

“What will we eat?”

“Where will we go?”

Jensen closes his eyes against the questions because they aren’t directed at him, or at anyone in particular. He doesn’t have answers and he’s tired. He’s so tired. They should go put out the fires first, maybe. See what’s salvageable in the fields and stables and lead whatever’s still alive and whatever’s still working up into the hills to the smoke houses so that there’s someplace to stay while they clean up. Not that he’s in any position to make the suggestion.

Wait for Alpha, he thinks to himself on the edge of a harsh exhale that aches in every part of him. He’ll know what to do. He’s coming.

Jensen’s father does come, out of breath from sprinting all the way from the river, sweaty and flushed with the few he brought with him to help with the tree on his heels.

Jensen sits up straighter the second his father stumbles into the clearing and looks around with wide eyes at the remnants of his pack loitering in confusion and reluctance in the face of the aftermath of tragedy.

“Where’s my wife?” he asks immediately, looking them each in the face.

Silence fills the clearing. The only thing that moves is the smoke that rolls in on the winds.

“Where,” his voice cracks, “Is my wife?”

The air in Jensen’s lungs is dense stone. His father’s eyes cut into him, right through him.

“What did you do?” he whispers hoarsely.

Jensen’s mouth opens on a wet crackle but nothing comes out.

“Fucking humans,” Alpha growls low in his throat. “Fucking humans!” He screams and lunges and for a second Jensen thinks that Alpha is aiming for him; claws unsheathed for Jensen’s throat, teeth elongated for Jensen’s heart. Jensen flinches once violently, holding himself as rigid as possible to avoid cowering before he realizes that his father has gone for the corpse, spitting and snarling as he tears into the dead man with vengeance and grief.

Chunks of meat wing off through the air as he rips them away from the body and flings carelessly. A long string of shredded intestine wheels through the air and slaps wetly in Jensen’s lap, strung over his legs limply.

Don’t think, Jensen tells himself again. Just don’t think.

So he doesn’t. He doesn’t think again for a very long time.

-

Jensen wakes up screaming, kicking at demons that aren’t there. He pants in violent bursts, throat aching raw.

He doesn’t dream often, but when he does it’s a nightmare. The same nightmare, every time.

Jensen doesn’t think about how the entire house is probably awake from his screaming or how Alona’s probably hovering by the door or how his father is downstairs, sitting in his office and listening to his son in pain.

Jensen doesn’t think at all, doesn’t want to.

He just wrenches open the window and scrambles out into Moon’s light.

-

Jensen spends the entirety of Sunday laying on the couch, burning through the rest of the movies in the bag. Some of the others drift in and out, Alona bringing him lunch and watching him until he eats, but mostly he’s alone.

He smiles a few times. Once at the end of _Some Like It Hot,_ a couple of times during _The Princess Bride,_ but he doesn’t commit to a laugh because his throat still aches from screaming and he doesn’t know what Jared thinks about the movies _._ Has he seen them? If Jensen dropped their names would Jared look into them like Jensen had, laugh because he thought about Jensen laughing at the same thing? Could they share an experience without ever having to be in the same room or hold a stilted, uncomfortable conversation?

The thought makes him jittery, nervous and excited for something that is never going to happen.

He’s six films deep before he gets the funny feeling something’s off about the assortment of movies he’s been plied with and sorts through the bag.

They’re all comedies.

He’s not sure if Mike doesn’t trust him with tragedies or if he figures Jensen’s had enough of them.

-

When he gets to school on Monday there’s a candle sitting on his desk.

He treads over to it warily, hefting it in his palm and reading the label.

_Man Town._

“I get a discount.”

Jensen peers over his own shoulder. Jared looks healthy today, flushed with the chill of the air, blood pumping close to the skin high on his cheekbones and on the tips of his ears. Jensen can see that his knuckles are dry and cracked, a little ashy where the harsh winter has robbed his skin of moisture and Jared’s either neglected to take care of his own hide or lacks the resources. He could have bought himself hand lotion or Vaseline or painkillers, but he didn’t.

“I saw you checking them out,” Jared smiles and shrugs. “I mean, probably if you had actually wanted it you would have picked it up while you were there, but I wanted to get you something. I only get a first customer once. It’s okay if you don’t like it, but do my ego a favor and just take it anyway?”

Jared doesn’t take offense to Jensen’s silence or staring and Jensen figures he’s hashed out all on his own that Jensen’s not good at this and, while he’s sure Jared doesn’t expect him to be able to convey appropriate gratitude or be able to accept or reject the gift gracefully, Jensen wishes he could.

He slips the candle into his backpack, into the pouch where Alona usually tucks his food.

“Thank you,” he rasps quietly, earnestly.

Jensen doesn’t look at Jared, but he can nearly hear the content, subdued smile on Jared’s lips when he says, “No problem, Jensen.”


	4. Chapter 4

Jensen’s sure that in the entirety of his high school career here in Vermont he has never seen the inside of the cafeteria. Usually he slips outside and loiters his lunch period away out on the field, pressed up against the fence next to the woods. It’s a nice system. It works for him. He’s comfortable with it.

So he really has no idea why he chose today to investigate the interior design of the school’s lunchroom.

He stands in the open doorway, petrified by the bustle of the room. They buzz and writhe and Jensen snorts reflexively against the damned stench of them. Thick mayonnaise based dressings clashing with oily pizza skin intermingling with tart mustard on smoky lunchmeat all around him, in Jensen’s nose. They spill fumes and the area right behind Jensen’s eyes starts to ache.

He shifts in the open doorway, stuck between in and out when a firm hand lands heavily on a shoulder.

Jensen turns, lips twitching and eyes flashing.

“Stow it,” Christian snorts, unimpressed. “You in or out?”

There was a time not too long ago Jensen would have considered Christian to be the closest thing that he had to a best friend. They used to run together as children, reigning over their own mini-pack. They haven’t spoken in close to two years, but with the way Chris is looking at him with an eyebrow cocked and arms crossed over his chest no one would believe it’d been more than a week.

Jensen chews on the inside of his lip and nods once resolutely.

“Well, come on, then,” Christian huffs, as if he’s put upon by Jensen even while a smile plays around the corners of his mouth. He fits a hand on Jensen’s upper arm and guides him through the cafeteria before Jensen can reconsider.

There is a distinct perimeter of deserted chairs for two tables around the spot Michael’s laid claim to with ratty sneakers propped up on the tabletop as he balances on the back two legs of his chair and tosses vending-machine popcorn into his mouth.

“Hey.” Christian kicks out one of the legs of Mike’s chair and Michael loses half of his popcorn while squawking and pinwheeling his arms for balance. Christ snorts his amusement and pulls out another chair, wheeling it around so he can straddle the seat and rest his arms on the back. “Check it out, the prodigal son has returned.”

“Jensen!” Mike beams. “Hey!”

Jensen smiles a brief greeting and takes the seat opposite of them.

He can hear Tom and Katie long before he can see them, arguing so loudly about French fries that half a cafeteria’s worth of conversations stop through the sheer voluntary grievance at being unable to compete.

“Sweet potato fries are for hippies and communists!” Katie shouts as she slams down a tray stacked high with food on the table.

“You can’t prove that there is any relationship between communism and sweet potato fries!” Tom snaps back. “I’m sorry your arteries are going to clog full of grease before you’re thirty!”  He slams his own tray down on the table, a few rogue grapes tumbling off the bunch and rolling across the table.

Katie scoffs and rolls her eyes and it’s only then that they seem to realize Jensen’s there.

“Oh.” Katie blinks at him, stunned. “Look who decided to join the little people. Hey.”

Jensen uncurls his fingers from his palm in her direction and ducks his head.

“You should have told us you were gonna come by.” Tom takes the seat next to Jensen, close enough to be familiar but not so close that Jensen feels any more claustrophobic than he already does. “We would have picked up some more food.”

“It’s fine,” Jensen assures as he watches Katie and Mike tuck into two trays of food. “I’m not even that hungry.”

“Alona has second lunch block, you know,” Christian chimes in.

“I know.” Jensen shrugs and cuts a short glance around the room.

“So you just thought you’d come hang out with us hooligans for once?” Jensen gets a good eyeful of Mike’s chewed up chicken sandwich and maybe his tonsils. “I’m touched, Jenny.”

“Don’t call me that,” Jensen mutters automatically, so reflexive after years of continual teasing that not even two years of self-inflicted exile could beat it out of him.

“Why?” Michael challenges petulantly, chewing melodramatically.

“Because I said so,” Jensen grouses, falling back into old habits because it’s more comfortable than forming new ones and Michael won’t listen to logic either way.

“Oh?” A smile coils up the corner of Christian’s mouth and Jensen knows immediately that he’s made a terrible mistake.

“Jenny says,” Katie says slowly, as if marveling the phrase.

Jensen groans and buries his face in his hands. Fuck, he hates this song.

“Jenny says turn off the radio!” Tom chirps.

“Jenny says turn off the lights!” Christian choruses, laughing.

“Jenny says turn off the video!” Mike scream-sings, drawing the attention of the tables in their immediate vicinity. “You beat yourself up to bring yourself down!”

They all shout the ‘Let it go’s together off key and out of tune, getting gradually louder until they abandon any semblance of musicality and just shout it at the top of their lungs.

Jensen knows that they’re actively trying to embarrass and tease him, making up for lost time, and he’s duly irritated for a half a second before the warmth of familiarity and acceptance settles into his bones and he can’t be upset because he’s too busy being endeared. He can walk back in and sit at their table without them missing a beat.

They get into an argument over whether the lyrics are ‘the dealer deals and then the deal is through’ or ‘the dealer deals and then the steal is through’, even though Jensen’s pretty sure that it’s neither, and things rapidly disintegrate into a food fight.

Tom catches Katie in a headlock, smearing ketchup into her hair as she screams and punches at his ribs. Mike’s got a handful of popcorn down the back of Tom’s shirt, crushing it up through the fabric as he cackles and Christian flicks whatever rolls over his way at Jensen’s head.

Jensen ducks out of the way of a chunk of lettuce, grinning.

Katie flips Tom onto the table and Jensen thinks he can understand why the perimeter of barren chairs around their table exists.

He smiles softly to himself and dusts cheese out of his hair, glancing around.

Most everyone is staring at the scene they’re making -Christian threatening to tear Michael’s arms off and stuff them where the sun don’t shine if he takes another step closer with that popcorn and Tom wailing as Katie bites into his forearm- but there’s one pair of eyes halfway across the cafeteria that make Jensen pause.

-

“Do you know those guys?”

Jared’s hand is in a brace today. The kind that you can buy at the pharmacy. His knuckles are scabbed up and his whole hand is a little swollen. He’d limped when he walked into class late this morning.

“Who?” Not without effort Jensen pries his eyes away from Jared’s hand to his face.

“The people you were sitting with at lunch,” Jared elaborates as he subtly tucks his braced arm into the pouch of his oversized sweatshirt. The sweatshirt is a plain forest green that colors up Jared’s eyes instead of the burgundy longhorns that made him look pale and flush.

“Yeah.”

Jared raises his eyebrows and leans forward and Jensen realizes a half a second too late he’s waiting for an elaboration.

“They’re family,” Jensen says, shrugging uncomfortably and turning back to face forward in his desk because he feels like he’s giving away superfluous information even though Jared asked him for it.

“Huh.”

“What?” Jensen glances back over to Jared and Jared leans back in his seat and shrugs.

“Just weird, I guess,” he says slowly. “They don’t really seem like your type of crowd. Just, uh…They’re really loud and out there, and you’re sorta… not.”

Jensen regrets asking.

“Not that that’s a bad thing!” Jared cuts in quickly when Jensen starts to shrink back, his good hand extended like he can wrench his statement and Jensen’s offense right out of the air. “Just different, is all. You’re more reserved, I guess, while they’re in there every day getting into fights and throwing food. Seriously, the janitors hate them.”

The skies are clear today. The sunshine is sharp and bright through the air, unimpeded by the bare branches of trees and unsoftened by the scant, thin clouds. The sun is so bright that it hurts Jensen’s eyes when he stares out the window instead of at Jared.

“So that girl,” Jared begins again, seemingly intent to not let Jensen kill the subject. “That’s Alona?”

For a half a second Jensen doesn’t remember telling Jared about Alona, and then isn’t sure how to feel about the fact that Jared remembered at all. It was just a passing mention of a cousin he goes to the mall with, truly unworthy of any lasting note.

“No.” Jensen shuffles around the book work they’re supposed to be doing. “Alona has second lunch.”

“So who was that?” Jared asks with a disarming smile and Jensen wonders if he ever gets tired of trying to pry people out of their shells.

“Katie.”

“And the tall guy?”

“Tom.”

“And the loud one?”

“Mike.”

“And they’re all your cousins?”

“Yeah.”

Jared huffs out a sigh, equal parts restless and amused with Jensen’s monosyllabic replies. “Have your families always lived here?”

Jensen clears his throat uncomfortably and rasps out a short, “No,” waiting for Jared to drop it, but Jared does that thing with the interest and the silence again, waiting for Jensen to elaborate. “We moved up here two years back.”

“To the middle of nowhere, Vermont?” Jared chuffs. “Why?”

Jensen opens his mouth and waits for a short reply to fall off his tongue before he realizes there is no short answer. Trying to explain the fire or the hunters or the reason why Jensen’s family is fractured into clusters of pack instead of a home would be too many words and too many secrets, and while saying ‘My mother died’ would undoubtedly kill the conversation stone dead Jensen doesn’t want to make Jared feel that for him. He doesn’t want to see the look on his face; sympathy or empathy or pity.

“Dude, it’s okay,” Jared cuts in through Jensen’s distress, posture open and smile good natured. “You don’t have to tell me. I’m just nosy. Feel free to tell me to shut up whenever.”

“No,” Jensen protests softly, shaking his head slowly. “It’s fine.”

The bell shrills before Jared has time to form a response. Students shuffle their books back into the bags quickly while Jensen blinks and looks around in alarm.

No. No way. Class can’t be over already.

“See you tomorrow, Jensen.” Jared smiles as he stands, hefting his scuffed rucksack over the shoulder of his bum wrist.

Jensen’s the last person sitting in the room, staring dumbly at the clock mounted above the door.

He talked to Jared Padalecki for almost forty minutes today.

-

Jensen was sick when they moved up to Vermont. Wrist taped, knee braced, dirty gauze plastered up along his back and stomach and shoulders and knuckles, burning up with infection. They couldn’t go to a hospital; they didn’t have the time or the means to explain how so much damage had happened or a peculiar allergy to silver or what a silver knife was doing in his back at all. Peter, as the oldest and most learned of them, usually dealt with illness and injury within the pack, but Peter was dead now.

He doesn’t remember much of it.

Laying in the back of a flatbed truck naked, covered in a stiff blue tarp, delirious with fever and coughing up blood clots. The agony had been unspeakable and Jensen had wanted to claw himself out of his own skin and not replace the flesh with anything at all.

There were people sitting with him, pushing him back down any time he tried to get up. Alona curled up next to him for most of the trip, he thinks. Combing his hair off of his forehead, mopping up his sweat and blood. He’d continually confuse her with his mother and she never corrected him outright, just hushed him and held him against the rocking of the road. She’d tried to feed him or force him to drink but nothing would stay down.

He was going to die naked in the back of a truck in the middle of nowhere because of infection or dehydration or starvation and he didn’t even care. In fact, he thinks he might have begged for it at one point, sobbing and vomiting with his swollen wrist cradled against his shredded stomach, eyes to the unforgiving sun as he just begged for mercy.

The Moon wouldn’t let him die, though, the bitch. Full Moon came and She wrenched him out of his human flesh and forced him to pay tribute as wolf when he wanted nothing, nothing more in the entire world, than to just stop. Stop hurting and breathing and being. He just wanted to stop and She wouldn’t let him. She robbed him of his hurt, purged his body of the silver and turned him away from death’s door.

He hates Her for that.

Jensen didn’t die, but he never really started to live again. His knee still aches sometimes and his wrist cramps up hard when he has to write for extended periods; the cat’s-eye scar and ruined flesh on his back tingles with phantom pain at random intervals, and he never really picked up hunger from where he dropped it on the road.

He lost his appetite somewhere between Silvalopus and Vermont in the back of that truck, choking on his own stink and convinced he was no better than dead.

Which is why it’s so strange that Jensen wakes up hungry. Hungry like he hasn’t eaten in years.

The mattress springs creak under him as he sits up and blinks, holding onto his stomach like something’s wrong.

He eats almost three bites of almost everything Rebecca and Emily make that morning, Alona staring at him nearly the entire time. He makes it a half step closer towards the door at the end of the hall before realizing his father’s behind it and if he knocked they’d actually see one another.

Dawn’s breaking pink and purple across the horizon when they make the trek to school. She tucks a sandwich into his backpack and gives him a swift peck on the cheek on the front steps of the campus before turning towards the trailers off to the side of the fields. Jensen thinks he might even eat that sandwich today as he turns towards the front door.

“Hey, Jensen!”

Jensen might pull something in his neck he looks over his shoulder so quickly.

Jared hops up the steps, obviously favoring one leg over the other but grinning bright anyway.

“Hi,” Jensen blurts, stunned on one part that he’s seeing Jared so much sooner than he had anticipated and on the other that Jared wasn’t here already, sitting in an empty classroom and thinking up a list of topics to grill Jensen about today.

“Walk me to class?” Jared laughs, a little forced through the pained grit of his teeth but genuine and Jensen recognizes that he’s making fun of his own obvious invalidity.

His left knee buckles under his weight with every step, muscles tensed rigid to compensate as much as he can and not let on to what Jensen is pretty sure must be a terrible bruise. His foot turns in a little with every step, like an infant learning how to take the first fumbling steps in life; like he’s been demoted through agony.

“I fell down some stairs.” Jared shrugs and Jensen realizes he’s staring again. “Twisted my knee pretty bad.” He waves his hand out in the air imploringly, beseeching Jensen to take it and Jensen does with a small hesitation, giving Jared something solid to cling to for support. Skin to skin, palm to palm, Jensen tensing up his arm to be strong for Jared.

Jared’s hands are cold.

“Did you walk to school?” The question bursts from Jensen at the exact instance he connects that Jared’s entering the building through the front where if he had parked in the back lot he wouldn’t have circled around the entire building with a swollen knee, zero input from his brain.

“What? Yeah.” Jared laughs, a little louder and a little less sincere as he hauls himself up the last step, using Jensen to practically drag himself up with a stifled grunt. “My car’s in the shop and I couldn’t wrangle up a ride. It’s no big deal.”

There’s one auto shop in town; a family owned number that’s nearly as old as the town itself. Mark works there. He’s been bitching for a week about how the place is being fumigated for a termite infestation and no one’s allowed back on property until Thursday.

Jensen chews on his lip and doesn’t say anything.

-

He’s not stalking Jared.

He’s not.

He’s just-

Following Jared home because…

He has no idea what he’s doing.

Jensen prowls the tree-line along the edge of the sidewalk deep enough into the woods and trailing far enough behind that he won’t be noticed. With his belly low to the ground he watches Jared’s limp grow more pronounced with each step.

Jared pulled the hood of his sweatshirt up the second he hit the air outside of the school building, trailing after the mass exodus in what Jensen suspects was an attempt to stay out of everyone else’s way. He’s tucked deeper into that sweatshirt as time drew out and the walk grew longer, though. His hands are stuffed into the pockets, burrowed deep into the fabric and curled up tight against his own stomach in the blind hunt for warmth. The clatter clack of his teeth chattering echoes around the empty street.

Jensen’s sweating, suffering from stealthy exertion and the constant fever of his life –a symptom of his eternal condition- and, while he’d never wish the hell of this peculiar lycanthropic affliction on anyone, he wishes he could put that fever to good use for once and ease the frigid cramps in Jared’s hands.

Mud mucks up the fur of his stomach as he stoops under the weight of shame that thoughts like that carry.

The land they’re roaming was once all forest and nature; smooth curves of Mother Earth sprouting life before it had been uprooted for lodging and paved for easy access, violating the land in every sense imaginable. The road they’re following banks off into a gentle curve that cuts through what was once the smooth slope of a hill that happened to be in the way. Now it’s half a smooth slope with an abrupt dirt cliff tufted with clinging patches of stiff grass and dry wild flower pressed tight against the sidewalk.

The snow’s mostly melted now after a week, more and more of it seeping into the earth with each passing sun, softening it up so that Jensen’s footfalls muffle and sink deep as climbs the steady incline of the hill and keeps eyes on how Jared suffers under his own weight.

If Jensen were a real predator with the intent to use claws and teeth this would be his moment. Jared would be his prey and this would be the set up; while Jensen has the high ground and Jared still doesn’t have a clue he’s being tracked.

Jensen creeps closer to the edge and below him Jared limps.

He could do it.

He could coil up, pounce, sink his teeth into Jared’s throat so deep that the discs of his spine grate against his incisors, he could, he knows that he’s capable. Jensen has all of the power here and Jared is so helpless that he doesn’t even know.

The thought irritates Jensen.

The soft ground seeps and sags under Jensen’s forepaws as he leans deeper into his forward crouch and before he even really knows what’s happening the earth is slipping away from him. There’s a singular weightless moment where everything exists but nothing matters before down comes Jensen, mudslide and all.

Jensen yelps on the way down, the world a smear of shocking fear and swirling colors and he tumbles down the sheer dirt cliff with all of those sparse trusses of coarse stems beating against his body before he hits the concrete hard, air rushing out of his lungs so hard and so fast he can’t find it again for several shocking moments.

“Jesus Christ!” Jared slaps a hand over his heaving chest to stop his heart from bursting right through his ribs. There’s probably enough fear and sudden, startling adrenaline rocketing through his system with the impromptu introduction of a wolf into his life to beat his heart right out of his skin for sure.

When Jensen finally sucks down a reedy throat full of air he uses it to whine out his hurt and mortification. His feet are slow to coordinate underneath him and he keeps his ears down and his tail tucked firmly away. His body is hot with flush and just as soon as he has oxygen enough to move without wheezing that tail is going to stay between his legs as he sprints all the way home. Fuck.

“Uh,” Jared stammers awkwardly, trembling slightly. “Hey… Hey, buddy,” he says, voice pitched high like he’s talking to an exceptionally stupid dog and Jensen’s confused until he realizes that he is that exceptionally stupid dog.

Jared’s from Texas, Jensen recalls with sudden clarity. The closest thing he might have ever seen to a wolf like Jensen outside of a zoo is a coyote, and even that isn’t close.

Jared thinks he’s a dog, a huge husky maybe.

Jensen goes to his haunches so quickly that all of his new scrapes pull tight and weep a little. He sits prim like a civilized beast and Jared startles, face flushed and hands trembling. Eyes wide and rolling a little bit, Jensen wonders what in the sweet hell he’s doing even as he keeps doing it. Tail sweeping with an exaggeration that makes Jensen’s battered hips ache and forepaws kneading into the sidewalk with antsy, Jensen plays up the house pet.

“Hey, puppy,” Jared tries again, voice tight. With his entire body braced tight against the action, Jared extends one hand towards Jensen and mutters a soft, “Please don’t bite me,” under his breath.

And.

Well.

It’s not like Jensen ever expects to get an opportunity like this again; Jared’s palm open to him, fingers curled up a little like a lotus in bloom, actively welcoming Jensen to smell.

Jensen goes straight for the wrist, barely hesitating and Jared jumps again with his eagerness to snuffle against blue veins that press up against thin skin, spindly and sprawling like a road map. He pulls in a deep lungful like he’s drowning and his vision blurs with pleasure. He’ll feel like scum later, but right now he just wants to have this.

Realistically Jensen knows that Jared just smells like warm human skin and a combination of his everyday contacts like Ivory soap and the mildewy interior upholstery of his car. He understands that the only thing truly unique about Jared’s scent is the _Jared_ in it. Maybe it’s just deprivation that makes Jensen think that Jared smells as good as he does. A long term denial and his expectations have overridden the actual content, probably.

He nuzzles in deep, snuffling rapid little breaths to get as much as he can and quickly as he can manage.

Jared laughs shakily as Jensen butts his head up against his chest, mistaking Jensen’s eagerness for the touch deprivation of a lonely dog.

“Yes, yes, hello,” Jared coos as his hands fall gently over the top of Jensen’s head and rub a few short, soothing circles into the roots of his ears. Jensen shivers and presses his head up into the blind affection, half feeling like he’s stealing something and half not giving a damn. Long fingers card deep into his fur and comb down, checking for a collar.

The hands stall out and Jensen nearly whines his disappointment.

“Hello?” Jared calls, looking up to the ridge Jensen came sprawling down, waiting for an owner that isn’t going to come.

Jensen sits on his feet and noses through the thick fabric of the sweatshirt until he can wriggle up underneath Jared’s arm to where all of that body heat gets trapped.

“Where’s your owner, buddy?” Jared asks as he absently strokes down Jensen’s spine. “Are you lost? Huh?”

The question is very obviously rhetorical so Jensen doesn’t bother to pay attention.

Jared feels him over quickly, checking his paws and scrapes to assess the damage and Jensen tries to stifle the glow of embarrassment and shamed pleasure at being looked after, checked up on. Jared, who has no reason to care, hisses sympathetically when he catches muddy, bloody knots of fur with his combing and mutters apologies like a dog would understand.

Clever fingers find the trail from the back of his ear to the hinge of his jaw and stroke.

Jensen is so enthralled with the moment and the affection and the way they have to lean into each other to keep balanced so he’s allowed to take some of Jared’s weight off of his knee that he doesn’t want to acknowledge that eventually the moment will end and Jared will pull away and the warmth will fade and the smell will dissolve from his memory. Nothing bad exists in this moment. There’s just a lie and creature comfort.

Jensen exhales and watches Jared’s hair waft in his breath and feels briefly a muzzy contentment that smothers the trepidation of when the world starts turning again and the moment ends and Jensen can really begin to scorn himself for allowing the indulgence and getting mud and blood on Jared’s clothes and hands. He stole this time from Jared, took the moment and this familiar proximity without asking and without being forthright and Jared’s never going to know, but Jensen will.

“Okay, buddy.” Jared’s hands stop working him over. He grunts when he stands, something in his hip popping audibly, and Jensen stifles a high noise of discontent and tells himself to be thankful for what he’s gotten and not to beg for scraps. His ears fall and he ducks his head.

Jared glances around in obvious conflict, like someone shouting for a lost dog and clutching a frayed leash is going to come running out of the woods and relieve him of his newfound responsibility.

Jensen shouldn’t be doing this to him, he’s not Jared’s responsibility and he can take care of himself; but when Jared sighs and says, “Come on, boy,” Jensen perks right up.

“I guess I can take you home and look up missing dogs or shelters or something,” Jared reflects aloud as he situates his backpack back on his shoulders. He pauses mid action, looking off into the horizon and staring deeply. “It’ll be fine.” He seems uncertain, like he’s trying to reassure himself, but he goads Jensen to follow when he starts to walk.

Jensen follows, hesitant at first but so desperate to drag the moment out that he’d do almost anything at this point, even let Jared take the lead and shoulder the thinking for both of them. He wants to be the dumb dog Jared thinks he is. If he were this stupid he could be this happy, never worry, never care, let Jared do all that for him and he wants. He wants.

He trots wide circles around Jared for the duration of the walk, occasionally butting up against his good leg with the excess of nervous energy before bounding away and crouching, begging play with every inch of his body like he hasn’t since he was a child. His tongue lolls through his toothy grin and he pounces at Jared’s feet before prancing away.

“You’re obnoxious!” Jared accuses through his laughter and Jensen yips affirmation, falling into downward dog, mock coiling for a pounce. He cheeses it up for all he’s worth to get at more of Jared’s laughter, swelling with pride because he earned those laughs. He rolls in the grass, kicking his feet up in the air and wriggling because he’s just full to bursting. “Come on,” Jared beckons and Jensen follows him off into a cul-de-sac.

He realizes all at once where they are.

The pack house isn’t prestigious by maintenance or inhabitance, but the sheer number of people they had to fit into the house necessitated that they buy on the larger end of the market for the space they needed, which meant that they were situated in a more expensive neighborhood where the yards were sprawling and fenced high and everyone was so self-involved that no one cared much for anyone else’s business or ‘those crazy people with the dogs.’ While Jensen’s never really considered his living situation ideal he’s never thought about the alternative much either. It could be so much worse.

The houses on the street are spaced far apart with barren, balding lawns of patchy, brown grass. The actual houses themselves are single story, brick with faded vinyl siding and weathered screen doors. The sidewalk is cracked, years beyond needing to be reset.

It’s almost like the entire color pallet of the street has been diluted to murky greys and dull browns, leaving only Jared’s green sweatshirt.

Jared steps up onto an empty driveway and whistles over his shoulder so Jensen slinks up behind him, pressing behind his good knee and waiting for him to slot a key into the lock.

The house smells overwhelmingly of burnt tobacco, cheap beer, and gas and Jensen sneezes and gags with it.

“Ah, Jesus Christ, Ben,” Jared grouses and covers his mouth and nose with one hand. He ducks his head out of the door and sucks in one deep lungful of fresh air before diving back into the front hall and opening every window on his way to the kitchen, where he turns off the stove with the cold pot and the blown out pilot light.

“Every fuckin’ time,” Jared mutters under his breath, jarring a window open with his shoulder. “Not even my fault,” he rambles to himself as he turns on the fan and opens the back door.

Jensen sits at the front mat and tries not to breathe too deeply as he watches Jared limp around the cluttered kitchen and throw open all the windows and draw all the curtains, throwing the true poverty of the room into light.

“Stay,” Jared intones shortly before shuffling off down the hall.

The floors are old wood, scarred and worn down soft with years of abuse. The varnish, however long ago there actually was varnish, if ever, has been stripped by neglect. Jensen hates the thought that years of being carelessly stepped on made it ugly.

Jared comes back with a damp towel, looking pleased that Jensen had done as instructed. His knee crackles when he hunches next to Jensen and Jensen shuffles on his feet and makes a high noise of discontent.

“Calm down, you’re alright,” Jared soothes, mistaking Jensen’s distress to be aimed towards the towel. “Hold still, this’ll be over before you know it.”

He scrubs the mud and blood off of Jensen quickly and efficiently, rubbing hard against the grain of Jensen’s fur and Jensen huffs a breath right into his face.

“You’re gross. Don’t blame me.” Jared sticks his tongue out at the dog he brought home and wipes the mud out from under Jensen’s eyes. “There we go.”

There’s no evidence in the immediate vicinity of the older brother Jared told him about and when Jensen puts his nose to the air all he gets is human sweat and rotting food and the fucking gas stove ‘Ben’ must have left on.

“You must be hungry, huh?” That peppy ‘I’m-gonna-take-care-of-it’ tone is back, a little gaudy like he’s playing it up without really feeling it but Jensen wriggles, delighted anyway.

There’s a warmth and kindness to the moment that makes everything clenched up tight in Jensen’s chest ease up with the knowledge that Jared would take an animal in off the street and give it shelter and food and affection, and today he was that animal.

It’s a great moment while it lasts.

The front door squeals when it opens and slams when it closes. Jared stiffens where he’s leaning into the fridge.

The voice sounds like wet sandpaper on silk when it shouts, “Home!” from the front hall on the edge of a wet, phlegmy cough that crackles deep in the lungs and rasps hard in the throat.

“I’m in the kitchen,” Jared calls over his shoulder, a small tremor running through his voice.

“What the hell’s that smell?”

Heavy footsteps, floorboards creaking and shifting, sinking into the beams of the floor with the effort of maintaining the oppressive weight of the man walking across them proceed the newcomer into the kitchen. He’s skinny and leathery like someone left him out in the sun too long and his skin shriveled and browned while his hair bleached white. His eyes sunk into his head while he was staring into the baking sun all of his life and the bone surrounding protrudes nearly grotesquely out of his face. White stubble pokes out of his chin and up his cheeks and down his neck, unmaintained and presumably as old as his last shower.

He’s jingling keys and ambling with loose legs when he lets himself in.

“Someone left the stove on.” Jared keeps moving in the fridge, pointedly not looking at the man and keeping a distinct lack of tone away from the word ‘someone.’ “The flame went out or it never sparked all the way.”

“Oh.” The man strokes at his chin with a crooked finger. “Don’t let it happen again.”

“Yessir.”

“When was the last time you changed the oil in that piece of shit, by the way?” The man asks brashly, like he’s continuing a conversation that only he was really participating in before it started as he makes a beeline for the half empty bottle of Wild Turkey abandoned open without a glass on the counter. He tosses the keys down without looking and they clatter against the grimy tile.

“A little over two months ago.” Jared’s jaw is tight, lips barely moving while he speaks; perhaps compensating for the exaggerated roughness he uses jerking out lunch meats and leftovers from the fridge shelves, devoting himself wholly to the action like it’s going to suck him in and give him purpose. “Before I came up.”

“Drives like shit.”

“Sorry,” Jared grits.

“Don’t go using that tone with me, boy.”

“Sorry, Uncle Ben.”

“Damn straight,” the man, Uncle Ben, mutters into the rim of the bottle.

Jared snorts discretely to himself and knocks the door to the refrigerator closed with his elbow.

“What’re you getting all that food for?” Ben inquires in a drawl, voice lazy like he doesn’t really care but eyes sharp from the depths of his face.

“I thought the dog would want something to-”

Ben and Jensen both realize that Jensen’s there all at once.

“What the fuck is this?” Ben shouts, voice getting deeper in direct proportion with its volume as he points with the bottle at Jensen, who’s sitting by the oven immobile, unthinking, and blank like a stuffed animal and he very suddenly _is_ the stupid dog. Thoughts try to start up in the back of his brain but they short out violently, tearing through soft tissue and grey matter. Synapses misfire and Jensen’s options are narrowed down to ‘sit here’ and ‘vomit.’

“I found him on the way home,” Jared says quickly, voice a rushed slur. He holds his hands up, palms out like he’s pleading or steeling himself. “He’s hurt and I think somebody abandoned him and-“

“I’ve already got one fucking stray!” Spit flecks from Ben’s mouth and spatters against Jared when he leans into his space. For all that Ben lacks in height he makes up for in sheer presence, dominating Jared from below him. “What the fuck makes you think I want another one, you stupid shit!”

“He’s not staying, I was looking up-“

His palm cracks like a thunderclap when it connects with Jared’s cheek.

Jared goes stumbling down with the force, clutching at the side of his face and Jensen does gag, hacking and gritty, a knee-jerk reaction to the sound and the smell.

“Hey,” Ben shouts, barking and angling a skeletal hand towards Jensen. “If this stupid fucking mutt pukes on my floor, I swear to fucking God!”

Jared stays calm, biting back the noises beating down his teeth by knotting his jaw up tight as he crawls to put himself directly between Ben and Jensen.

Jensen’s fiberglass, lactic acid burning up his cramped, rigid muscles. His brain is a Brillo pad and his blood is anti-freeze and his gear shift is jammed between ‘Fight’ and ‘Flight,’ caught in the limbo of paralysis in between where everything important is bleeding out of his head and into the thin air like thought-smog.

Jared’s panting hard and he must have bitten his cheek or his tongue when Ben’s palm connected because blood spots his lower lips and dyes his teeth orange when he bares them. “He’s just going to be here for a few minutes.” His voice is even, soothing, and it’s so fucking stupid that’s he the calmest one in this situation.

“Don’t you fucking talk back to me, you worthless fuck!” Thick, fumbling fingers rip at belt buckles and leather hisses from belt-loops with friction while his other hand knots into long, soft brown hair, pulling hard. He folds the belt over once in a smooth, practiced motion.

He swings in an arch and the leather hisses through the air like steam cracks against Jared’s back like earthquakes.

This isn’t happening.

It’s not.

This isn’t real.

Jensen isn’t corporal anymore. He’s nothing. Just a camera with an input cable and no output. He’s a shape, sitting in a room and he’s watching Alona screaming at a man with a gun, but his knee isn’t broken anymore. There’s nothing stopping him except for the shock of previous serenity shattered and two years of breathing fear clotting up his system.

But this isn’t real.

It can’t be real because Jensen’s mother died in a fire right next to his childhood and Jensen’s father won’t see him and he’s spent two whole years numb and there has to be something still good in the world. There has to be. Some relief, some shining comfort, some place where good things happen to good people just because that’s what they deserve.

Fuck Jared’s bruises and his ribs and his knee and the belt and that alcohol-tobacco stench that blots him out, this _isn’t happening._

Jensen’s body is never really wholly human or wholly animal. When he’s a man, he’s a man with sharp eyes and sharper teeth; he can scent things that humans can’t smell and he can hear things that humans can’t hear. When he’s a wolf he can think things through, make informed decisions, emote, speak a few stilted words, and sweat. Probably sweating is the only way they can survive with an internal body temperature cranked up so high and a layer of fur.

He’d never really thought about it too hard.

Now, though, the cold sweat is breaking out down the ridge of his spine, springing from his pores so he smells like salt and fear and he doesn’t want to think about anything else.

What a strange marvel of nature he is.                                                                              

He’s this pseudo-natural beast, quasi founded in reality. For all logic says he shouldn’t exist. Jensen shouldn’t be real. He shouldn’t be alive.

If he never existed Jared would still be here. Curled on the floor, screaming and writhing and cussing. The leather of the belt cracks against his skin and even as he arches away from the sting welts rise red and purple down his back.

“Stupid fucking fag!” Ben shouts and if the world followed natural law and Jensen had never been conceived into existence he would have still shouted that.

If Jensen had never been born Ben’s boot would have struck Jared’s stomach just as heavily.

If Jensen had died in the back of a truck like he should have Jared would still be coughing up blood.

“Stay down!” Ben screams and Jared, smart boy that he is, does; even when Ben spits on him.

Some of the stripes on his back are bleeding, thick rivulets of blood slipping from the broken skin and streaming down his back, slippery and thick. Some are just beaded with red, blood seeping through the raised flesh with abuse, but a few have torn. Muscle could have ripped from bone without the skin breaking, though. His organs could have ruptured and none of that would show so easily on his skin.

Jared sobs. He probably doesn’t even realize that’s what he’s doing because he’s working so hard to hold himself still against the shivering of setting shock, fingers curled into his own shoulders like he’s holding his chest together to keep it from cracking open. He looks small like that, hugging himself together in a trembling pile of thin skin and awkward bones on the floor. It’s the closest thing he’s going to get to a comforting embrace.

All of this would have come to be with or without Jensen as petrified witness.

There’s a whining, tight noise leaking into the room like a smoke alarm sounding in one continuous stream of increasing volume and panic and for a moment Jensen thinks the sound is coming out of Jared before he feels it in his own throat.

He blinks, eyes burning with the abrupt end of prolonged exposure. He’s sore, rigid, a plywood cutout.

Ben sniffs hard and the back of his hand rasps against the stubble high on his cheek when he swipes at the accumulated sweat on his face.

“Shut up,” he growls at Jensen, like he expects a stupid fucking animal to understand but the sound climbs higher and tighter in Jensen throat, louder and louder as he sweats and stands frozen solid. “Shut. Up.”

“Don’t.” Jared’s voice is small. He gets another boot to the stomach and that noise grows louder and louder. Jensen’s lungs are getting tighter and his throat strains with the sound burning through. It’s the only thing Jensen can get out with his thoughts clogged up and his muscles locked tight and he has no idea what’s going to happen when the sound breaks.

“Shut up!” Ben screams and Jensen’s sound shatters into a bark, a grizzly snarl that raises the clumped fur down his spine. His lips curls and he glares with flashing yellow eyes.

He doesn’t see Ben throw the bottle, but he hears it shatter and feels glass fragments pelt against his skin and he jerks away reflexively with a white hot flash of adrenaline striking the back of his skull, sizzling his nerves like lightning. Mold broken, muscles unclenched, fiberglass splintered into thousands of sticky, irritating shards, he doesn’t stop backing away.

His nails scratch against the wood floor when he scrambles and bolts, leaping for the counter and hurling himself out the open window, eyes shut tight and ears ringing with the crack of leather and Jared’s screaming.

He runs until his feet bleed. And then he runs some more.


	5. Chapter 5

Alona wakes up at five, internal alarm clock attuned to the set of Moon and the rise of the sun. Genevieve’s hands twined around her waist sometime during the night, pulling her close for warmth and comfort and Alona takes a single, silent moment in the still darkness to snuggle deep into Gen’s stomach, hug her close and breathe in one deep, cleansing breath that smells nearly, almost like home.

Genevieve barely stirs when Alona slips from her arms, resetting the quilts behind her.

The jeans she shimmies into are worn supple, any of the stiffness of denim beaten out of them by overuse and they feel like a second skin: breathable, flexible, functional. She pulls on a pink sheer blouse over a black wife-beater that Seb bought but Danneel appropriated and she looks and feels natural.

Comfortable.

Alona twists in the mirror, taking in herself in her girl skin.

She’s quite pretty, she notices. Damn lovely, in fact.

She’s almost of courting age. Open for being engaged in a mate. Not that anyone’s made too big of a deal out of coming of age over the past two years.

Alona started cycling with every fourth moon four years ago in spring and there had been a celebration for her as well as the other girls who had come with the season, and they all thanked the Moon for fertility and potential and life with fire and howls. She’d always pitied the boys that they would never be received into the world with such pomp and circumstance. She’d thrived on the music and the sweet wine, indulging in the company of her sisters and moonlight as they spun tales of their futures, teasingly picking from the boys whom they would allow to pursue when the time came.

She supposes she could have been courted back then.

Not that anyone would have allowed it, they’ve adopted some habits from their own humanity after all, but it seems silly to her to wait another five years to start living.

There will be no songs sung for her if she chooses a mate in this house.

There have been no songs for two years.

It doesn’t matter how lovely she is.

Alona pulls on her sneakers. They’re ratty, thready and worn past the point of comfort and into poverty. The soles stick-tear against the floor when she leaves.

When Alona finds Jensen he’s sitting alone in his bedroom with his back to the open door, staring at the single lit candle on his desk, surround by a clergy of dark ones. Which is odd because Jensen usually lights them in tens, more if he can manage. It must be a new purchase because Alona’s never seen or smelled it before. It’s not really Jensen’s type, either. He goes for the simple, singular smells with identifiable sources. He likes natural things.

The thing burning on his desk is not a natural scent.

 _Man Town,_ Alona catches the label of the purple candle and momentarily tries to imagine Jensen purchasing a ‘Man Town’ scented candle. It’s mostly liquid from the heat of the flame and she wonders how long he’s been letting it burn.

“Jensen,” she calls softly and knocks her knuckle into the doorframe. “It’s time to get going for school.”

The room is silent and still all around him, settling on his skin like dust and he doesn’t even twitch. In fact, Alona is about to go as far as to assume that he’s fallen asleep sitting up or into some deep meditative trance before she catches the sweep of his eyelashes over the edge of his cheekbone she’s got a view of.

“Jensen, come on,” she goads gently. “It’s Thursday. Only today and then tomorrow and then you’ve got the weekend to yourself. It’ll be fine.”

Those eyelashes drop. He looks down to where his hands are cradled in his lap and Alona follows his sight.

“Jesus!” she gasps and defies every law surrounding Jensen’s bedroom by rushing in and hitting her knees next to the floor with a force that probably bruises down to her kneecaps. She pries his hands out of his lap, pulling frenziedly to get his fingers to uncurl from his palm to see the hurt. For some reasons flashes of holes in his palms cut through her mind, rusty nails and wooden crosses, but that’s not it at all. The pads of his hands are worn raw and cracked deeply, dried blood flaking off onto Alona’s fingers and he doesn’t even flinch when the scabs fissure and ooze. “What happened? Jensen!”

When he turns his eyes on her he moves like cold molasses. His faces is pale and disturbingly vacant, like he’s wearing a mask of himself with blurry red eyes and deep purple smudges painted in thick sweeps underneath them.

“Have you slept?” Alona cups at the side of his face, leaving rusty smears as she angles his chin up towards the light of the sole candle to see if his pupils respond. “Jensen? Come on, talk to me; what’s going on?”

“I fucked up,” he slurs, shrugging sloppily.

She leaves his hands folded like wilting lilies in his lap, on top of his bloody feet, and holds his face. Her knees dig into the hardwood flooring as she leans up into his space and presses her forehead tight into his, clutching desperately.

“What happened?” she whispers into his air. “Are you okay?”

“I…” A stroke of something closely related to helplessness, but not exactly, passes over his face and creases up the corners of his eyes deeply. “I’m okay,” he rasps.

Her fingernails scrape gently along the hair of his temple, soothing and he closes his eyes like he’s in pain and leans into the small comfort. “Do I need to eat someone?”

He shakes his head and forces a shaky, tired smile on her behalf as she thumbs over his eyelids and cheekbones.

“It’s my fault,” he mumbles.

“What?” She wants to bundle him up, pull him into her lap rock him to actual calmness and not this eerie façade. “What’d you do? Jensen, talk to me,” she pleads.

“I fucked up,” he repeats.

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not.”

She helps him limp to the bathroom with one arm hauled over her shoulder, dried blood leaving rusty sedimentary stains all over her pretty pink blouse. He goes pliantly into the bottom of the tub, poured like liquid into the porcelain because he doesn’t care enough to constitute himself independently from gravity.

Alona tries to grill him gently while she turns on the tap and steps to the mirrored cabinet to grab the first-aid kit stowed up in the high corner, but he doesn’t stray from monosyllables and blank staring.

Alona exhales heavily and kneads at her eyes.

They were doing so well. He was doing so damn well.

“C’mon,” she ushers for his hand as she lowers herself to the reasonably grimy tile of the bathroom floor.

Jensen’s knees are up around his ears and the bathwater is orange and scalding, making the white of him pink and fugging up the air with coils of steam. There’s other marks on Jensen that she can make out through the humidity. Some bruises that look like someone took a switch to him, a couple of fine cuts on his face and neck that are too thin and precise to be the random beating of low, unseen branches in the night.

Alona sighs to herself, exhausted in her bones with taking care of Jensen, but not nearly so much as Jensen must be. She bares her teeth in sympathy hisses occasionally as she cleans and bandages her way through the mess when the torn flesh opens and Jensen tenses against the cutting sting of antibacterial.

“Jensen.” Her voice comes out softly, weak. “Did you do this to yourself?”

He doesn’t say anything for a long time, until the last swirls of blood-muddy water slither down the drain and Alona’s sure he just won’t answer at all.

“Yes.”

“Okay,” she says, because what else is there to say. One step forward, seven steps back. “Okay.”

His head rolls on his neck until he’s looking blankly in her direction, maybe taking her in, maybe staring at the wall behind her. “I fucked up,” he says and she’s starting to get that.

“Okay.” She’s nodding now, head bobbling like her skull is on hydraulics. “Yeah, yeah, alright. You know what? You and me, we’re going to go rent some more movies and we’re going to hang out on the couch all day, yeah?” she babbles rapidly, words funneling out of her mouth in a fizz like champagne bubbles. “I’ll make some mac and cheese for lunch and we’re just gonna relax, okay? Sound good?”

Jensen’s eyebrows twitch and crease. “What about school?”

“We’re skipping,” Alona declares.

The crease deepens. “I can’t.”

“What?”

Jensen’s shaking his head, gaining momentum and when he starts talking the words flow from him in torrents like river waters flooding. “No, I gotta go, I’ve got to see, I can’t, you don’t understand, I fucked up, I fucked up so bad, I can’t-”

She cuts him off with gripping hands on his shoulders, wide eyes, and a nearly shouted, “Alright!”

Jensen curls up into himself, trembling all over so hard that his teeth chatter. The sheen of sweat and wet on his skin sinks his eyes into his skull, makes the dark darker and the pale flush a ruddy, inhuman red. The same red that’s started to spot through the white Alona’s swaddled his hands and feet in. He looks sick. Broken.

The knees of Alona’s jeans are soaked wet and stained pink. She thinks that maybe there won’t ever be songs to sing again.

-

Alona puts a bag of M&M’s in his backpack. One of the bigger ones. Jensen can hear the individual candies clatter and shift against each other when he rocks on his feet and stares at the raw brick of the high school.

The warning bell rang already. While there’s six more minutes before school starts, this is officially the latest Jensen has ever been.

His feet ache and his hands are pressing tightly against the bandages with swelling. He clenches his fists and feels each split flare hotly into his bones, pain settling over him like a cloak of self-possession.

He hasn’t slept in twenty six hours. His body aches through every fiber of his being with exertion and exhaustion, and his eyes have been burning for hours. His head hurts, his stomach feels queasy, he wants to crawl into bed, into a hole, and just die.

Really, truly die. Cease to be. Fall through the cracks of reality so that he doesn’t have to choose between walking through those doors and walking away and he doesn’t have to confront his own folly. He wants to breathe in deeply and the on the exhale he wants the soul of him to leak out of his nostrils and swirl into the air like fog, dissipating into the chill because there is an English classroom on the second floor of the building in front of him, and Jensen knows every secret the boy who sits one desk in from the back window has.

There has never been a person conceived into existence that was lower than Jensen, he’s sure of it. No one could even compare to this useless pile of shit, too piss terrified to own up to himself or his own mistakes.

He bites his lip so hard his eyes water.

He doesn’t want to go inside. Holy Moon, he does not want to go inside.

He does anyway.

Jared looks like fresh hell. There’s the obvious; the paleness of him, the way his eyes don’t focus, how he sways in his seat and curls into his sweatshirt. He looks ill, maybe. Like he’s fighting a flu. But then there’s the things that aren’t so obvious. His back isn’t touching the back of the seat. He reeks like anti-septic and sterile medical tape. He doesn’t look up or smile when Jensen steps in the room.

For the first time Jensen thinks that maybe sitting in the back of the room was a strategic move by Jared rather than an act of convenience. He’s deep enough in the room that Mr. Hawthorne’s eyes barely reach him and there’s no one behind him to see how his shoulders hunch or his breathing shutters. There’s just Jensen.

“Hi,” Jensen whispers and his voice comes out more like a shiver than a word. Jared either doesn’t hear him or doesn’t have enough energy to lift his eyes to meet Jensen’s. He blinks slowly, staring off blankly and Jensen just sits in his unsteady desk as the bell rings.

He smells like blood and the stale cinnamon spice flavor of fear as if he let it dry on his skin because he ran out of time to shower between treating himself and getting ready for school. On top of that, though, is that thick pain smell; like rotting leaves and wet earth and burning tears. It smells the way milk on the edge of spoiled tastes, if milk on the edge of spoiled could sink into your marrow and ache. If it was sour and cloying and in every fiber of you.

Jared’s breath rattles in his lungs.

“Jared.”

“Hm?” Jared’s eyes move and then the rest of his body follows, like he’s on time delay when he finally does look to Jensen. “Hey, Jensen,” he croaks and his lips curved into a subdued smile that doesn’t touch even his teeth.

“Hi,” Jensen shivers again.

What is he supposed to say? What else is there to say?

Through his own haze of pain Jared still registers the abnormality of Jensen initiating conversation and his smile cranks up while his eyes, by contrast, go a little duller. “Hey.”

The bandages that wallpaper Jared’s back crinkle when he shifts in his seat and he winces slightly before turning towards Jensen, like it’s just another day.

Jensen sweats and licks his lips and jounces his knee and tries to think up something to say. He’s got forty five minutes to think of something, anything. He doesn’t know.

Jensen scratches at his neck, long red lines welting his skin where his nails are a little thicker, a little longer, a little darker, than they normally would be. He swallows, blinks, and figures maybe he should start with a ‘How are you feeling’ or a ‘What’s up’ or really any sort of question that might lead to any sort of conversation.

He scratches at the back of his neck and those welts bleed.

“Are you alright?”

Great question.

Jensen wishes he’d thought of it.

“What?” Jensen frowns.

“Your hands.” Jared gestures to the bandages that Jensen’s practically wearing as gloves. “Are you alright?”

Jensen bleats out a thin little laugh that stinks like mania.

Jared’s actually asking him if _he_ is okay.

“Burns,” he finally gets out after his reedy laugh exhausts itself.

“Sucks, man.” Jared nods sympathetically but he’s obviously waning, fading away from the conversation and maybe reality itself.

Jensen clenches his fist so hard that splotches of red seep through the white wrappings. There’s an ache in his bones, restless and zinging up and down his spine, coiling up in the base of his tailbone like the phantom of the tail he isn’t wearing. It’s whipping at him with anxiety and relentless, harrowing _need._ He _needs_ to say something, do something, but he doesn’t know what and the weight of that responsibility is so wholly crushing Jensen can feel his ribs buckling under the weight of it.

Jensen opens his mouth and after an initial blurt of useless noise, “You look terrible,” stumbles off his tongue. God damn it.

“What?” Jared’s brow crinkles up and he squints at Jensen like he’s a million miles away instead of the distance between their desks.

Jensen thinks he used to have a brain.

“I-I mean,” he stutters and drums his fingers on his desk, sending shocky pulls of pain dancing through his nerves. “Are you alright, too? Like… You… Are you alright? Because you asked me if I was alright, and you look, I mean you don’t look bad or anything you just look…”

“Terrible?”

“Yes,” Jensen says. “No. Wait…”

Jared has mercy and cuts him off before he can really get going. “I’m fine. Just a little head cold.”

Jensen’s tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth.

He nearly tears the bag of M&M’s when he wrenches them out of his bag.

He wishes he had some kill to lay at Jared’s feet, some mangled meat he could offer up for absolution. He wishes he could come to Jared covered in blood with the fruits of labor to prove that he’s worth some ounce of the forgiveness he’s begging for, for everything that he is and everything that he doesn’t understand and everything that he doesn’t know how to do.

Jared doesn’t know that the handful of M&M’s Jensen scatters across his desk are apologies. He eats them anyway.

“Thanks.” Jared smiles and, if the way he eats the candies like they’re precious is any indication, he didn’t eat breakfast this morning. Probably not even dinner last night.

Jensen can smell when one of the gashes across Jared’s back opens up, fresh and wet. The blood’s too thick for the abuse to be purely cosmetic. Maybe over his kidneys, Jensen thinks, paranoid. Maybe enough to burst something Jared doesn’t know is bleeding out inside of him right this second, stench of organs ruptured oozing from his pores and into Jensen’s air. He’d coughed up blood yesterday, Jensen remembers. That might not have just been trauma, that could have been something torn.

He whines in his throat and shovels more M&M’s over to Jared’s desk as he tries to think of something to say for forty-five minutes. Jared steadily gets slower and paler, dulling around the edges, fading out.

The bell rings and the bag’s empty.                   

-

Jared isn’t at lunch.

-

Jared isn’t at school the next day.

\--

Alona likes pottery. She likes the feel of gritty wet earth malleable between her fingers, excess gathering up in the dips of her skin, and she likes shaping it into something solid and beautiful. It’s an enjoyable way to start the day. Relaxing.

Pottery is her Zen place.

She doesn’t appreciate it when her Zen place is disrupted.

Staccato rapping at the door has most everyone in first period pottery class glancing away from their wheels sharply. Alona has wet clay under her fingernails and in her hair and there’s a streak of it drying like itchy chalk on her cheek where she’d had to scratch.

The knocking grows louder, more obnoxiously persistent and Mrs. Wei, who generally contents herself not to do anything remarkably exerting before ten o’ clock, grouses irritably and mutters, “I’m coming,” as she shuffles her way towards the door.

The wheels whirr but most hands stop working over the mounds of wet clay as the small class of sixteen all watch as Mrs. Wei’s slippered feet scrape against the dirty floors, interest piqued by the unusual disruption.

The knocking is so forceful that when Mrs. Wei does finally get around to tripping the lock the kid behind the knocks comes practically tumbling into the room.

“What do you want?” Mrs. Wei demands, vexed that she’d had to pry herself out of her chair.

“S-Sorry,” the kid stutters and Alona’s ears perk up. “I- I’m looking for Alona.”

“Jensen?” Alona’s chair teeters and her pot sloughs off to one side as she abandons both.

“You know him?” Mrs. Wei asks.

Jensen looks like shit. Shittier than he looked twenty minutes ago when she last saw him, which Alona wouldn’t have thought even possible if the evidence weren’t staring her right in the face with glazed eyes and pallid skin.

“What’s wrong?” Alona demands quickly, checking him over for any obvious injury because Jensen has never, not once in his life, actively sought her out this way. “Are you alright?”

“I just…” Jensen swallows and the noise makes a sticky, thick sound down his neck. His eyes cut around the room and take in all the eyes that are on him, shifting on his feet and rolling his shoulders restlessly. “I need to talk to you.”

“C’mon.” She grabs for his wrist and starts tugging.

“Where are you-” Mrs. Wei starts.

Alona shuts the door in her face.

-

They make it out to the field before Jensen starts to crack up, breath coming choppier the farther he gets from the last time he saw Jared. He hits his knees on the fifty yard line and clutches at himself as the sobs wrench out of his throat.

Frosted grass pokes out between the fingers of the one hand he has braced against the ground to keep from collapsing in on himself. The muddy splash of his fall is flecked across his face, neck, and chest; dirt indiscernible from freckles.

“Hey, hey!” Alona’s there, in his space, breathing deeper to compensate for Jensen’s spiral towards hyperventilation. Her fingers are caked with the chalky dust of dry clay, clumped up in under her fingernails and drying hard and grey on her cuticles. The dust smears across his face when she cradles his jaw, soothing the tears away, grounding him as she hushes and holds with flurried, dirty hands. “Jensen? Jensen! Talk to me, what’s going on?” she asks frantically.

“I lost him,” Jensen wheezes. “I fucking lost him, can’t do anything right, didn’t know what to say or do, froze up, and now he’s gone, I lost him.”

“Who?” Desperation and distress stroke over her face and pump acidic adrenaline through her veins.

“Jared,” Jensen wheezes, and then again: “I lost him.”

“Jared?” Alona feels her eyebrows hitch as she gropes urgently for a connection. “Jared? Jared, who? Jared- that kid Mike was talking about?”

Jensen nods and sucks down a wet lungful of cold air.

“What happened to Jared, Jensen?” She can feel her voice starting to wing out as she bares anxious teeth.

“Blood,” he rasps.

“Did you hurt him?” Her fingers bite viciously into his face, denting his flesh deeply as claws dig into his cheekbones. “Were you fucking _stupid_ enough-”

He’s shaking his head violently before she even really starts, eyes closed tight.

“Wasn’t me,” he heaves and once he starts he can’t stop. “I wouldn’t- couldn’t ever, you don’t- fuck, fuck, but I let it happen, I was there and I couldn’t even- so fucking useless, should have gone in the fire, should have been me instead of her, so useless,” he rambles and quakes, all of his words coming out in a fragmented torrent of stuttered syllables and broken phrases like he’s been holding them in so long he can’t keep them from hemorrhaging out of him.

Alona’s palm stings when it crosses Jensen’s cheek.

It’s another few minutes of stifled sobs and soothing rubs before Jensen calms down enough to tell her the whole story in shudders and stops.

“You knew?” she asks when he’s reached the part where he sat in the classroom with an extra lunch and a half packed in his backpack, waiting for someone who didn’t show up. “Before you followed him home, you knew.”

Jensen sniffs and doesn’t look at her. “I had an idea.”

“We need to tell someone,” she insists as she dredges up memories of health class lectures and school wide assemblies on what they’re supposed to do in situations like this.

Jensen snorts darkly, a sudden strength filling his throat. “And tell them what? He’ll deny it if they ask him -he’ll tell them he got it in a fight somewhere, he’s being bullied or something. And it’s not like we have any evidence. He’s not going to say anything. He’s too proud or too smart, but he knows what he’s into. He’s so... I don’t know how to explain. Strong. He’s so fucking strong, Alona, you don’t even know. If he’s in this, it’s by his own choice. He could leave. He could. He just doesn’t.”

Jensen stares off into the layered greys of the sky and the black silhouettes of the bare branches reaching towards the shrouded sun. “He’s only been here a month,” he mutters to himself, face blank in thought. “Started school half-way through the year. Drove up a month ago. He’s living with his uncle. He’s from Texas, doesn’t even like the cold; hates it here. He’s not here ‘cause he wants to be, he’s here because he doesn’t have a choice.” His brow creases up. “Why, though?”

“I don’t know, Jensen.” Alona purses her lips. “And it doesn’t really matter. What matters is what we’re going to do about it.”

Jensen’s shoulders collapse into his ribs again, the weight of the world, bowing him towards the ground.

“I don’t know,” he mumbles. “I don’t know anything. What if-” his voice cracks and he looks up to her, pleading with glossy eyes. “What if he never comes back? What if it’s already too late? What if he-” Jensen cuts himself off with an unsteady exhale as the tears start to drip again.

Alona wants with every fiber of her being to tell him that it’s okay, but she’s not going to lie to him. One mistake is all it takes. There aren’t second chances when it comes to things like this.

There’s a question -just one question- that’s been eating at Alona’s tongue since Jensen hit the field and she knows that now isn’t the time and she shouldn’t, really, really shouldn’t; but then she is, saying: “Why him, Jensen?”

“What?” He blinks at her, too distraught to comprehend.

She should back off, beg never mind and get him home, but it’s like her mouth has a mind of its own while her brain has none.

“Why do you care?” Her tone is small but holds a definite note of demand. “Why do you care about him?”

The question feels cruel on her lips, but not invalid. If it had been any other person sitting next to Jared the answer would have been obvious; a kid in need is something that demands care.

But Jensen doesn’t care about things, especially not human things. Jensen is inept at caring. Jensen is out of practice at caring. He’s plain not good at it; why would he start now? For a regular boy, no less. Some teenage kid with one form and a life that may be nightmarish, but surely couldn’t even compare to the travesties Jensen held the entire race of man accountable for.

Jensen started waking up for this boy.

Alona’s not complaining, but she’s curious.

“I...I don’t know,” he admits, looking a little wide-eyed and lost; a face Alona hasn’t seen in years. He pauses for a long time, licking his lips and glancing out to the forest. “I just do.”

Alona figures that’s the best she’s going to get for now.

-

It takes Jensen four hours to convince himself to retrace his steps and walk by Jared’s house.

He doesn’t really have a plan other than that. He entertains the brief fantasy that Jared’s going to be sitting on the porch and Jensen won’t even have to walk down the street to see that he’s still alive, just taking a well-earned sick day to recuperate, but of course that’s ridiculous.

Maybe Jared will be inside, sitting at that island counter, enjoying the calm between storms. Maybe he’ll be curled in bed, sleeping off painkillers or just plain old pain. Maybe if Jensen knocked he’d open the door and not ask questions about how Jensen knows where he lives, invite him inside, or Jensen could invite him out, lure him away from the grey brown house on the grey brown street and take him somewhere where there’s enough color for him.

Not that any of Jensen’s imaginings matter any, when it comes down to it.

The piece of shit Maverick isn’t in the driveway. There’s no one home.

He wouldn’t have been able to knock anyway.

-

Moon is a sliver on Saturday and nonexistent on Sunday. Jensen watches the light chase the dark in two complete circuits from his bed, and he feels as empty as the night sky.

It’s a monthly collapse of faith. Abandoned by his goddess, Jensen feels for the first time that he won’t ever see Her again.

He howls dirges for a boy he barely knew and the blankness of the dark surrounds him.

-

Jensen first met death when he was five and a fox got into the rabbit cage.

There had been one rabbit in particular that Jensen had grown fond of while he helped his mother and Auntie Sam tend to the animals. The one brown rabbit was notable from the others through a splotchy white discoloration over half of her chest and Jensen named her Sonny, Sonny the Bunny, and had fallen incandescently in love. He’d understood in the back of his mind that the rabbits they kept and the rabbits they ate were one in the same, but he was sure, positive, that he would be able to save Sonny Bunny, keep her safe and warm and loved and fed fat on clover to the end of his days.

Rebecca had tried to warn him any time he’d kneel next to her and cuddle Sonny close that these rabbits were marked for death, show them love but don’t get attached. Jensen hadn’t listened. His daddy was Alpha; what did that mean if he couldn’t keep one rabbit to himself?

He’d appealed to his father tenaciously until he was gifted Sonny, torn her from the jaws of death itself and he was pleased as punch, planning their futures of lazing in the sunshine and eating the vegetables out of the garden while no one was tending.

It was interesting, in retrospect, how sure Jensen was that he’d halted death in its tracks or that his father had the ability to conjure such power in the natural order of the world to allow Jensen to cheat the reaper out of one sweet bunny soul.

The fox had burrowed and wriggled and dragged itself under the chicken wire, leaving it curled up like a dry leaf in the corner.

Massacre.

Bloody, violent, silent genocide.

Sam had tried to keep Jensen back while his father and Jeff started prying the stakes out of the ground so they could get to cleaning, but Jensen slipped her bracing arm and hit his knees in the sodden ground next to a mangled corpse of a rabbit he’d held hours before.

Hours. A series of minutes and seconds and brief instances slipping by him between the last time he’d seen Sonny with a beating heart and now minutes, seconds, terrifyingly fleeting instances were dragging him away from Sonny’s death. And he hadn’t been able to do anything about it.

There had been no consoling the five year old Jensen, just as there was no consoling the eighteen year old one.

Honestly, he’s not even really sure how he got to school.

Jensen blinks and glances around the English classroom, dutifully ignoring the empty desk next to him as he tries to hash out what time it is and what state of order he’s in.

His shirt’s on backwards and inside out but other than that, the pounding headache, and the hollowness of his chest cavity, everything seems to be in order.

“Jensen?”

Jensen’s slow to roll his eyes up and up and up to Mr. Hawthorne standing over him. Mr. Hawthorne’s expression is some splice of sympathetic, concerned, and scared; eyes creased in the corners and mouth downturned into well used grooves. Jensen probably looks every second of the last four sleepless days.

Jensen makes a sound that’s really just a vibration of vocal chords to no motive other than to prove he was listening and still living.

“Are you alright?” Mr. Hawthorne asks. “Do you want to go to the nurse?”

There’s six other students in the room, one girl smelling overwhelmingly of onion bagel, and Jensen figures the bell hasn’t rung yet or there’d be way more people staring at him like he’s about to snap.

Jensen shakes his head.

“You sure?” Mr. Hawthorne asks again, laughing a little anxiously. “You look a little green around the gills, son.”

Jensen wants to tell him that he’s not his son but instead he compulsively smoothes over his eyebrow and mumbles, “I’m sure.”

Mr. Hawthorne concedes defeat and retreats back towards the front of the room, presumably to greet the remaining students that are filtering it.

His body would collapse in a day or two and he’d sleep twenty hours straight and never want to get up again. When he woke up the world would make a little bit more sense. He thought so, anyway. Not that he cared all that much, but, whatever.

Jensen’s head lists off to the side and he stares out the window into the grossly crystalline blue sky and the clear cut of brilliant sunshine through the trees. The snow’s melted.

The bell rings and Jensen doesn’t even glance up, too busy trying to remember how he woke up this morning or how his mother smelled and what Jared’s hands felt like down the back of his neck.

“Late,” Mr. Hawthorne chirps to the students that file in after the bell, loitering out in the hall a second and a half too long.

“Sorry, sir.”

Jensen tenses up. Every fiber stringing his muscles together and linking flesh to bone goes cold glass rigid and just as breakable. He turns in phases, a disjointed movement that reflects the spring of hope and the burn of that hope repressed as he tries to decide if he even wants to see, confirm that he’s right but risk being wrong in the process.

He isn’t wrong, though.

“Hey, Jensen.”

Jared looks amazing. He’s still hobbling a little and his shoulders hunch up and forward, nearly around his pinked ears. The red flush on his face is half wind-burn, his hair is greasy thick with being unwashed and he hasn’t shaved. His eyes are a little blood shot and he reeks wholly of himself and the interior of his car.

“Wow, man,” Jared laughs and swipes playfully at Jensen’s shoulder as he passes by, casual in a way that defies labeling. “You look like shit.”

Jensen laughs, eyes burning as he stares and stares and stares his fill without blinking.

Jensen is too exhausted to comprehend anything as complex as the soup of emotions at a rolling boil in his chest, so he just lets it stew and steep and the predominate relief overwhelms every last inch of him. “You weren’t here on Friday.” He says, and his voice cracks.

Jared grins and sits gingerly. “I had to take care of a thing. Don’t worry about it.”

He doesn’t smell like tobacco and sour milk.


	6. Chapter 6

  
Full Moon touches along Alona’s spine like a new lover, leaving no inch of her body unexplored, unexposed and Alona wriggles in the dirt with it.

Full Moon excites her. Full Moon is freedom, release, absolution.

Her teeth ache in her mouth and into her bones and she tosses her head and howls the shift on, waiting for the crack and tear.

The last two weeks had been merry hell, exhausting beyond words. Jensen had been blowing hot and cold every day, jittery with Jared’s return but continually plagued by the reality of what had transpired and his role thereof. But Alona had gotten a blow by blow update on Jared’s condition and she was pleased as she could be for a boy she knew only by reputation and his steady recovery, the notable lack of new crops of hurt, a healthy glow returning to his cheeks. Alona had forced Jensen to point him out to her in a crowd a few days ago and Jared Padalecki had looked distinctly like a underfed chicken to her, but Jensen had insisted that he was good, amazing, so much better.

On top of that Katie had gotten detention, Sebastian had been fired for making a pass at his manager’s fiancé, Matt broke his foot trying to leap the river while playing some idiotic drinking game with Mark in the woods, Hilarie and Jeff celebrated the three year anniversary of the loss of their first pup, and Alona was so tired.

So god damn tired.

She spread her arms up over her head and let the silver moonlight wash over her like baptism and felt the old creases of her soul smooth out under Mother Moon’s cleanness.

Alona breathes in like she can suck the moonbeams down into her lungs, but only gets a throat full of dark forest and cold air for her troubles.

More than anything Alona doesn’t want to think tonight. She wants Moon to play puppet with her body and take away those human stresses; make a jigsaw puzzle out of her and fit the pieces together in a new world of sights and smells where everything makes sense for a few hours.

The skin in the dip of her spine rips, splits right down the center and Alona screams a howl as her flesh gives way to fur. She arches up into the nighttime and clutches for those streams of cool light with warped fingers and tapered claws. Every muscle in her body pulls tight, tighter, tightest, and then tears right down the middle and she welcomes the pain as relief and the change as release.

She flips onto all fours as the pressure builds like boiling water in her vertebrae, spine a pressure cooker until it finally bursts and a tail whips out. The bones feel cold up into her hips and that’s the only sensation of tail Alona has for the brief instance between human and wolf where she’s a shoddy half-beast caught in between the two and has to wait for flesh and fur to complete her. Her jowls come easy and her eyes flux fast and when she howls again she’s beautiful, baying into the night her thanks to Moon.

A return howl echoes through the trees off to Alona’s side and she perks up, delighted to hear Michael and then, a few beats later, Tom, calling back to her. She doesn’t want to be alone.

The land between them is short work and when they meet they wriggle and swipe playfully, dancing through the clearings and enjoying the night.

She and Mike let Tom take the lead, chasing his tail through the shadows of trees as he bounds through the darkness. It can’t be past eleven, surely –Moon hasn’t even reached Her peak- but the trees get thicker the deeper into the forest they sprint and seeing the sharpness of outlines is more difficult.

By the time they make it through the thick brush and into the park’s camp grounds all three of them are panting heavy breaths and sweating enough to clump fur, tongues lolling out of their smiles and curling with each harsh pull of air.

Alona doesn’t come up around the camping grounds much. It always smells like burnt and nylon equipment, but it’s been too cold for camping lately so the distinct _human_ fragrance has dissipated.

She tosses her head up in the clearing, sniffing as Mike and Tom snuffle around the edge, pawing at old raccoon trails.

The path leads up to a small parking area that’s flat gravel and broken sticks, close enough to see but far enough away to maintain the feel of being abandoned to the wilderness.

Alona cocks her head to the side and squints at the back corner of a car parked off the lot opening. She doesn’t know much about cars but it’s not a new one, rusty and small and completely out of place here in the cold.

Her head drops between her shoulders and her ears swivel down flat as she pads a silent step towards the car.

The bitter ammonia and salt scent of urine hits the air off deeper in the woods but Alona ignores it in favor of the car that might be blue or red or pink or gold for all she can tell in the darkness with her animal eyes. She circles the vehicle like a shark and she can tell it’s empty by the way the cab sounds through the cracked windows and smells of nothing in particular in the open air.

Who would drive a car up to the mountain and just abandon it? Alona flicks her tail with equal parts irritation and curiosity as she rounds the front corner of the vehicle and comes upon a name imprinted on the upper right corner of the grill.

_Maverick._

Alona ponders the word for a moment before shrugging a bony shoulder and turning from the abandoned car, figuring it’s just a mystery she’ll never get an answer for and wondering where Tom and Michael got off to.

She yips a questioning call into the air.

She gets a long, loud, undeniably human scream in response.

-

The floor is clean and smooth and empty and cold all around Jensen. He sits cross-legged in the center of it, so spiteful he hasn’t even stripped out of his clothes. Like holding himself in the very middle of the room is going to keep him away from the open window and the Moon looming just outside, beckoning him sweetly. Sweetly, for now.

His breathing comes measured and he wonders for a moment if what he’s doing technically counts as meditation. Though, meditation is more the hunt for inner peace, he supposes. Inner peace is just a bit out of Jensen’s reach. He doesn’t want inner peace, he just wants control.

What he doesn’t want is to be the Moon’s bitch.

Jensen breathes in.

The cool breeze leaks in through the open window, curling around him and playing in the flames of the candles. Moon keeps the darkness banked.

Jensen breathes out.

Most everyone left earlier, when the sky started to blacken and the Moon drew higher, not yet peaked but peeking. Jensen thinks he has the house to himself except for his father downstairs locked in his office and maybe a straggler or two avoiding the cold.

No one’s expected back until morning, after the Moon abandons them back to themselves.

Jensen can hear the door squeal open downstairs and it sounds like panic.

“Jensen!”

Alona.

“Jensen!” Her voice is desperation and fear.

He scuffs that wide, blank floor when he scrambles out the open door of his bedroom and Jensen’s halfway down the stairs before the oppressive scent of blood hits him full in the chest and he goes stumbling back a half step, shaking his head like he can knock the stank out of his nostrils.

There’s guttural moaning, Mike babbling, Tom shouting, and then again: “Jensen!”

“What happened?” Jensen’s shouting when he hits the bottom step, sprinting the corner on trembling knees and running headlong into the second worst thing he’s ever seen in his life.

“I’m sorry,” Alona sobs. There’s a smear of blood down the left side of her face and striped through her hair, the same blood that’s pooling all around her, running the grout of the tiles in the foyer in a growing network each second the blood runs unabated. The blood’s all over Tom’s hands and Michael’s face, cut through with his tears and dripping from the swell of his lower lip. “It wasn’t his fault.”

Jensen is wrist deep in blood without ever telling himself to get in there, hands braced over the wound like the sheer presence of him could seal up the deep gashes.

“Jared!” he’s screaming but Jared’s not responding, gone pale past his lips and eyes glazed. There’s this long, continuous sound chattering off his teeth that sounds like weeping, broken only by wet pulls of air. He’s trembling all over, though Alona’s trying to keep him as still as she can by pulling his head into her lap, hissing out hysterical shushes that feel like nostalgia to Jensen as she combs through his hair like it’s going to help.

“Fuck!” Jensen shouts and the blood runs fast and hot and dark. He’s hot and cold all over, burning up and freezing to death all at once with adrenaline and shock. Because no. No. No. “What the fuck happened?” he demands sharply and his teeth cut up his tongue.

“He ran!” Mike defends quickly and loudly. “I didn’t know! Who runs from a wolf? I just- I couldn’t—”

Instinct.

Jensen gets it.

It doesn’t stop the vicious snarl from tearing out of his throat and echoing through the house, but he gets it.

“Jensen!” Alona snaps and drags his attention back the question of the here and now and the kid Jensen’s dragged into his lap who’s dying or changing or both.

“Jared,” Jensen calls again frantically. “Jared, look at me, come on!” He shakes the boy in his hands once harshly, looking for something, anything.

Jared’s breath hitches up in his throat, tacky like it’s sticking to his soft pallet. His lips are moving but no words are coming out.

“We should have left him.” Tom’s shaking down to his bones. “People are going to ask questions, it’s going to come back to us, hunters will—”

Jensen growls and digs in harder to Jared’s torn flesh.                                                                                                

When he looks back onto the whole messy affair later he’ll wonder what took his father so long. Maybe he’d already shifted and had the beat the wolf back. Maybe the screaming or the scent of blood wasn’t enough to get him to roll off the couch and get to the door to see what was going on.

All Jensen knows at the time is one moment his father isn’t there, and the next he is, tearing Jensen away from Jared and sending everyone scrambling towards the walls with a harsh Alpha roar.

“What is this?” he barks, shaking Jensen by the scruff towards the mess of Jared on the floor like he’s a puppy predisposed to calamity that needs his nose rubbed in his mistakes or he won’t learn.

“There was an accident!” Jensen writhes against Alpha’s grip, straining for the prone boy on the floor with the sweat slick skin and the fever bright eyes.

“You brought _a human_ into my house?” Alpha spits, face contorted. His fingers dig harder, claws gouging into the soft skin of Jensen’s neck.

“He’s been bitten,” Jensen protests quickly. “If he lives-”

“His allegiances to humanity will live with him!” Spit flecks across Jensen’s face before he’s shoved roughly to the ground, bones clattering against the tile.

Alpha paces furiously, strong body strung taut like piano wire, vibrating with tension. He tosses his head, snorting furiously. “Are you that dull, boy?” he demands and Jensen flinches away from his tone. “What about his family? He can’t ever be one of us! If he lives he’ll only bring death to our doorstep!”

“He has no family,” Jensen interjects quickly as he scoots closer towards Jared, pleading like he hasn’t since Sonny. “He won’t be a problem, you can’t-”

“I can’t?” Alpha’s tone is cutting, sardonic and cold. “I _can_ and I _will_ do whatever is best for this pack.” Even as he speaks his incisors lengthen to points and press against his lips. “Born human, dies human.”

He lunges and that instinct that Jensen condemned Michael for barely seconds ago sends Jensen scrambling backwards and throwing himself down over Jared’s body with a snarl, blatantly defying his own father, his Alpha.

They hiss and spit at one another, Jensen’s chest pressed down into Jared’s and he feels feline in the moment; an alley cat. Thickening fur raises up tall all along his spine, fingers splayed and crooked with digging claws, his palms stinging from where they slapped against the tile, and there’s blood spattered across his face from the splash-back. He arches an extreme, obscure parabola to keep eye contact with the looming force above him and to shield the waning one below.

Unsteady, bloodstained fingers curl into the hem of Jensen’s shirt, just looking for something to cling to through the pain.

“ _No_ ,” Jensen snarls, practically coughing the word up from deep in his chest and it resonates in the room like a dark echo. Sweat stings his eyes, fur itches along his spine and pressure boils in his tailbone, and he means that ‘no’ with every single bone in his body and fiber in his muscle; more than he’s ever meant anything before in his entire life.

“Move,” Alpha says lowly and Jensen knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that it’s the last chance being afforded to him because of their blood that if he were anyone else he’d already be ribbons, that this is the last punch hole he has in the ‘son’ card.

Is Jensen ready to defy his father for that no? Is he ready to die for it?

“You,” Jensen pronounces boldly through bared teeth, pulse jumping in his neck. “Can’t. Have. Him.”

Alona’s behind him. Back pressed up against the wall, arms crossed over her naked chest like she has to hold herself together, but she’s there. Tom and Michael are practically plastered to the wall, smearing blood that’s going to have to be scrubbed out before it stains into the plaster, but they’re behind Jensen too. Sam’s through the kitchen door, watching silently, fearfully. Misha and Sebastian and in the doorway to the basement, already shaggy and yellow eyed, claws long and black by their sides. They’re all waiting for something to snap and test their loyalties.

This is the reckoning.

Alpha notices the audience and, more than that, notices he doesn’t have the audience’s favor. The fight fades from his face with his teeth, but not the fury.

“Fine,” Jensen’s father bites off. “You want him? You can have him. He’s yours. His mistakes are yours. His faults are yours. Any punishment he faces will be yours as well, tenfold.” He snorts a harsh exhale through his nose and cuts his eyes through every soul witnessing. “If he kills us, you’ve killed us, Jensen.”

Jensen bares his teeth still as Alpha stalks back into his office and slams the door.

The lock clicks and the tension fades out abruptly.

“What the shit?” Misha snaps but anyone who could explain anything is already busy.

“Jared.” Jensen is bundling Jared up, trying to fit six plus feet of lanky, bloody teenager into his arms without inflicting any unnecessary pain, but Jared still whimpers and tries to writhe away. Alona catches him on the other side before he can crash back into the ground.

“It’s gonna be okay, honey,” she mumbles and presses Jared’s hair out of his face, supporting him on the other side as Jensen situates his weight, hooking a hand under his knees and getting Jared’s head supported into his shoulder.

Jensen stands, hoisting the added mostly-dead weight with him.

It’s his dead weight now. His burden, his responsibility, his.

The thought is so mind numbingly terrifying Jensen doesn’t know how to begin to wrap his head around it. Out of the frying pan and into the inferno.

He tucks Jared in closer as he scales the stairs unsteadily and Jared really starts to convulse through the agony, but he gets them to the top of the steps and into his bedroom.

He shuts the door.

-

Pain.

It’s Jared’s beginning and end.

His blood is a symphony and all the instruments are out of tune.

He’d heard about the wolves, of course. They seemed to be the pride and joy of the community; the spontaneous occurrence of an endangered species in their neck of the woods. Not that anyone had ever really seen the wolves in the flesh from what Jared had gathered, but the evidence was all around them. The prints the rangers took, the howls in the middle of the night.

It’s not even that Jared hadn’t believed the wolves were real. They had just been an abstract concept to him; something he hadn’t even considered as a plausible factor in his own life when he’d headed for the forest in the hunt for a place to crash at night out of the way of questioning eyes.

Two hours ago Jared’s biggest problem was trying to hash out approximately how many times he could sneak into the community center to take a shower without them realizing he wasn’t enrolled in a class and now he’s going to die bleeding out because a goddamn wolf bit a chunk out of his fucking shoulder.

Jared wants to laugh because it’s so unfunny that it is.

He can feel the gouges carved into his body, those wet open caverns that sting cold like shock but burn hot like infection. Each breath he sucks in seems to split him open wider and wider and he’s sure that any second now those slashes through his back and those holes punched into his shoulder are going to finish wearing straight through him and he’ll unravel.

His vision went first, blood loss spotting everything pulsating black and he can’t focus on any singular thing in a world full of smears. He lost track of the feel of the world around the time that a voice –shrill and distinctly female- was screaming, shouting obscenities and orders and Jared was hauled out of the dirt and into a car. His own car, he thinks.

They didn’t take him to the hospital. Why didn’t they take him to the hospital?

Jared sobs and his body throbs and the cold creeps closer.

Jared’s been in shock before –more and more frequently lately- he knows the symptoms and he waits for a river of cold and unfeeling to finally sweep him out into a sea of sweet silence where time doesn’t matter but there is no silence. There’s booming snarls and rough, grating voices that he can’t make sense out of and the cold’s fading out, breaking into blazing, hellacious heat that sits heavy and makes him writhe.

The world rocks around him and Jared screams as he’s jostled and the floor falls away from under his hands. There is no solid. No comfort, no safe. Just those two bands of firm heat keeping him upright, supporting all of his weight and dragging him away from the strange floor and dark growls.

The movement jostles him, opens those valleys carved into him. Colors smear around him and nausea threatens his throat.

“It’s okay.”

The floor comes back and wide, spindly, fluttery _things_ that Jared can only assume are hands and fingers stroke over his brow and down the side of his face in what he’s sure is supposed to be comfort. Jared weeps and curls in on himself.

“I’ve got you, it’s okay.”

It’s not okay, the voice is lying and Jared wants to shout for it to shut up, just shut the fuck up and let him burn to death in peace.

“Sh,” there’s hushing and only when the floor moves underneath him does Jared realize he’s not lying flat on the ground, but he’s tucked into a chest, pressed tight against a body with arms bracketing his own and his blood soaking into a shirt.

Jared’s eyes are rolling, and he can’t focus anywhere to look up and see who’s got him stuck here, whispering lies in his ear as he sobs in agony.

Why did no one take him to a hospital? He’s in fucking _pain._ It’s spreading through him, he can feel it like a plague and this is really truly what death feels like.

Something soft brushes his ear and Jared tries to flinch away before the softness moves in sweeps and from it comes whispers, “When it starts, don’t try to fight it. She’s going to take care of you.”

Jared shakes his head in blind disagreement.

He just wanted to graduate high school. He just wanted to get a job and pay through community college and move to some big city somewhere. He wanted to live.

He wants to live.

When his stomach clenches up Jared shouts out, not expecting the sudden, unrelated pain and the shushing in his ear is back.

“Just let it happen.” The body rocks him and another lightning flash of clenching agony strikes Jared straight through his abdomen.

Jared groans as the cramps tighten up in his core and they spread like wild fire.

Fumbling fingers tear at his shirt and if Jared could see anything through those pulsating black splotches and tears he’d fight back with his stupid useless paralyzed limbs.

His bones ache. His skin feels too small. His blood is boiling.  He’s dying.

“You’re okay, hold on for me.”

His muscles seize up so hard Jared feels some delicate bone go off like a kernel of popcorn in his wrist.

He’s panting and screaming like he’s running a marathon on a bed of nails and another bone splinters under the force of his own body.

There’s a rambling babble of background noise that sounds like apologies, and there’s a palm spread over his forehead, firm and uncompromising. The other arm is a brace over Jared’s chest, holding him immobile and keeping him pulled tight against that solid torso when he tries to arch away from himself.

Pop, pop, pop- his bones crunch up one by one, warped by his own muscles.

Jared wants to go home.

“Please,” he sobs, sweaty and bloody and exhausted. He doesn’t know what he’s begging for, exactly, but – please.

“Sh.” The hand smoothes back his hair, carding the sweaty clumps out of his face. “I’ve got you. Breathe for me, come on.”

Jared sucks down a lungful of stale air and on the exhale his spine breaks.

“Fuck!”

Vertebrae grind in his ears, echoing in his throat.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” Fumbling fingers stumble over Jared’s sore skin around his navel, groping awkwardly until they find the waistband of his jeans and start shoving down Jared’s hips.

Hell.

He’s in Hell.

His parents were right and Jared’s died and gone straight to Hell.

“No,” comes ripping out of his throat, breathy and hysterical.

His backbone twists and Jared loses words to plead with in the sick mess of himself. He feels like he’s molding, the world chewing him up and spitting him back out, leaving him to fester and rot. He’s a splinter. Septic.

Something tears down Jared’s tailbone and he feels –feels-

No.

No.

He bites his tongue on jagged teeth and scratches at his arms over with clawed fingers connected to fissuring knuckles and feels thick, coarse hair burst through his skin.

When he tries to scream his jaw snaps under the pressure.

“Sorry, I’m so sorry.”

\--

Sunlight filters through the curtainless window in shades of blue, fighting through thick grey clouds to touch over Jared’s face as he wakes up slowly, groggy but warm for the first time in a long time.

Clean sheets rustle gently when he stretches sore muscles lazily and for a bleary half second he thinks he’s home and the hot breath fanning over his shoulder is his dog and he’s going to go downstairs to his kitchen to his parents who love him dearly and eat his breakfast and keep living his life.

Only he hasn’t been home in nearly three months and he’s never seen the dog curled around him before in his life.

Jared sits up abruptly, feeling like he was half asleep before he had a thought of falling and his body jerked violently in response. The dog whines sleepily and –whose fucking dog is that? Where the _fuck_ is he? Why in the _god damn holy fucking hell_ isn’t he wearing any clothes?

Jared pulls the sheets up protectively over his chest like it’s going to preserve some of his modesty because that’s all there is: sheets. No quilts or comforters or blankets. The whole room is barren, hollow like no one lives here. The bed isn’t even really a bed. It’s a mattress on a box-spring shoved into the corner. There’s a desk backed against the wall that holds the only real evidence of personality in an extensive set of candles in assorted colors burned down to different heights. Jared recognizes the Yankee Candle label on the outside of the jarred candles. The scene strikes Jared as more ‘black metal virgin sacrifice’ than comforting presence.

Jared’s hand wanders over his own shoulder and smoothes over unbroken skin and he tries to remember how, exactly, he got to this lifeless place. He checks for his other marks self-consciously, afraid of who might have seen what, but he is unblemished. Welts and bruises and scabs, all gone.

Flashes of pain roll through his mind, images of wolves and blood and teeth.

He’s never dropped acid before but he can only assume that the effect must be something similar to his experience last night – was it last night? Yesterday? Two weeks ago?

Jared fidgets.

Someone drugged him. There was no way that was just some vivid nightmare. He’s never had sensory hallucinations, but it doesn’t take a lot of intuition to pinpoint them when they happen.

“Oh my god.” Jared puts his hand over his mouth.

Someone drugged him. He woke up naked.

A burble of hysterical laughter flutters out between his fingers before he can swallow it back down and run through the logistics of not losing his shit in the middle of a crisis situation because –holy fuck- someone _drugged_ him and he woke up _naked_.

Jared isn’t sure if there’s actually a big market for sex slaves in nowheresville, Vermont but he figures if he were in charge of a crime syndicate he’d pick somewhere remote and outwardly wholesome as a front. He’s seen _Taken_ , but he sure as hell doesn’t have Liam Neeson looking for him.

Jared scrubs his hands through his hair and his eyes burn.

Would they even be interested in boys, though? Even boys like him.

Or maybe there is no slave market, no impassive criminal face that doesn’t care about Jared beyond his body’s ability to pay back for the drugs they spent on inducing him. Maybe it’s one person, one obsessive, twisted stranger who saw Jared alone and grabbed his chance, comforted by the knowledge that no one would care about the kid sleeping in his car in the middle of the woods.

Jared’s distraught for a half a second before he gets angry. Really angry. Angry about every second of the last four months of his life and angry because how dare someone, anyone, try to cull him.  How dare they think that Jared’s going to allow himself to be stopped now, after everything he’s already dragged himself through. Do they think he’s going to sit stagnant and let this happen?

“Fuck this,” he hisses to no one in particular. He twists towards the window, pressing his hands and nose up against the cold glass to get a feel for how far he is from the ground. The roof slants right underneath the window and there’s a trellis with dead, clinging ivy that doesn’t look like it’ll hold his weight, but it’s sure as hell going to have to try.

Jared looks over his shoulder, hands still fogging up the window where they’re pressed flat to the glass. Two doors, one’s to the hall and one’s a double-wide closet.

A sharp bark cuts him off before he can even really start -more a short whoop than a true, rough bark, but Jared had nearly forgotten the dog was there.

And, boy, is the dog _there._ He’s huge, and Jared used to own a mastiff mix. When he lumbers to stand up on the bed their eyes are level and his head is massive beyond reason, connected to a thick neck, a wide torso, and legs that are so obscenely long Jared can’t even think up a breed they might belong to in the few short seconds Jared’s thinking coherently at all.

The dog snuffles around his neck and Jared whimpers and tries to shrink away, bowing away from the dog and the teeth Jared knows are less than a second away from burying into his flesh at all times.

Jared gropes behind his head for the window latch, hand shaking as hot breath blows over his pulse and the dog barks again. Jared startles so hard he accidentally bites his tongue.

“Easy, boy,” he stammers, but he can’t keep the fear out of his voice as he presses back deeper into the window, cold seeping into his skin through the thin glass.

The barking cuts to whining abruptly and the dog jumps off the bed and into a short, aggressive stretch before sitting heavily, wriggling in obvious discomfort and stamping his forepaws in some unknown vexation. He sneezes a huff out his nose and shakes out his pelt and whines a high, sharp sound when Jared’s hands edge back towards the window.

After what seems to Jared a long moment of canine reflection the dog comes to a sense of calm and stares Jared full in the face.

The animal keeps that eye contact even when his eyes fade towards green, even when his skin starts to spot through his fur, even when his jaw cracks, snaps, folds backwards into human features.

Jared presses up tighter into the wall, like it’s going to open up and pull him out and doesn’t think a single coherent thought because he’s been boiled down to a base sense of awed fear.

The animal groans and arches as paws stretch into feet and his spine presses up against his skin, shifting and rolling and the tail cracks, snaps, pops, recedes.

Jared’s heard these rumors, too. That the reason why no one has ever seen those wolves in the forest or the reason why they came out of nowhere is because they aren’t really wolves. They aren’t real at all.

Chad had told him the story of the wolves, how some of the kids who hike out into the woods to smoke and drink had seen wolves doing the same, lounging on the river beds with naked boys with bottles of bourbon and half burned cigarettes, telling bad jokes and listening to _CCR_ on the radio.

“Them,” Chad had whispered, nodding his head towards the other side of the cafeteria where a small group congregated in the center of a field of empty tables.

“That’s why no one talks to them,” Aldis had affirmed, nodding sagely. “I don’t know what the hell’s going on with them, but they’re weird and I don’t want any part of it and you shouldn’t either.”

Jared hadn’t believed him. Of course he hadn’t believed him; it was so ridiculous. They were just trying to pull one over on the new kid.

The dog’s forepaws stretch out and pale into long, nimble fingers with blackened claws that blunt out into pink nails and this is taking the joke far too far.

Jared’s heartbeat is in his ears, echoing around the hollowness of his skull.

There is no dog.

There’s the kid Jared sits next to in English.

Jensen Ackles is sitting on the floor, naked, where the dog used to be, staring down at his own hands in his lap. He’s pale and freckled all over, cinnamon specks dusting over his shoulders liberally and filtering out over the rest of him.  He’s beautiful, though Jared never really had any doubt. The defined musculature of his shoulders and down his chest twitches and jumps as he picks at his nails, what had been claws moments before. He glances up, big green eyes and thick lashes and the even symmetry of his face. He chews on the inside of his lip and his knees jiggle.

Jared swallows and it tastes like bile. He wants to say something profound or he wants to scream and scream and scream until his lungs come heaving out of his body with the paradoxical vacuum he creates through the sheer force of his horror.

However, when he does open his mouth only a single, stupid word comes stumbling off his tongue.

“Werewolf,” Jared exhales.

Jensen perks up, blinking once before a small grin cracks across his lips and the motion sends Jared flinching away but then Jensen’s reaching out his arm towards the very center of Jared’s chest, pointing with a single finger.

“There wolf.”

Jared passes out.

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	7. Chapter 7

  
The hall is open and silent as Alona pads her way up the stairs. The entire house is open and silent, in fact. Everyone’s retreated into their hidey holes, curling into their tails and waiting for the fallout. Some of them had even left the pack house, squirreling themselves away in Jeff’s spare bedrooms or on the couches in David’s apartment.

It’s been sixteen hours since Jared hit their door and rumors had spread quickly, faster than wildfire. A mix of truths and fabrications, Sebastian weaving an elaborate tale of how Jensen maimed the Alpha in the sorrow of watching his human plaything die, torn to shreds by his own teeth in a fit of Moon madness. Sam has hushed him, whispering, “That’s not what happened,” even as her eyes shifted and she looked unsure.

Mike had lapsed into silence and Tom had taken charge over him, watching him to make sure he didn’t do anything stupid.

She switches the weight of the tray in her hands from her fingers to a single palm and raps her knuckles against Jensen’s door. The hallway looks so much narrower with it closed. Alona doesn’t think she’s ever seen it.

The door opens just enough that she can slip inside.

The room smells sharp and industrial clean like the PineSol and soapy water she’d slipped through a crack in the door in the early hours of the morning along with a set of towels that had all returned to her brown with dried blood. Jensen has candles lit to try and chase the smell out, though. She has to shuffle some of them off towards the corners of the desk so she can set down the tray.

“Hey, sweetie?” Alona coos gently as she pads the short distance to the bed and sits on the very edge. “Are you hungry?”

Jared doesn’t move except to blink at the window.

Jensen slides down the wall on the opposite end of the room, as far away from the bed as he can physically get while still remaining present. The loose grey sweatpants he pulled on at some point bunch up under his knees in excess when he draws them up towards his chest and folds his arms overtop of them. He looks to her with wide, pleading eyes; lost.

“Jared?” she tries again, hesitantly reaching to put her hand on his bare shoulder, establishing physical contact.

He flinches mutedly but doesn’t shrug her hand away. He might not have the energy, but Alona decides to take it as a positive.

“Come on,” she chides softly. “Sam made stew.”

He continues to stare listlessly into the glass and Alona wonders if he’s looking at the greying sky beyond or his reflection, looking back at him with glazed eyes and a blank expression.

“It’s here when you want some,” she assures before tucking a bit of hair behind his ear and giving him space.

Steam curls around her fingers when she plucks up one of the two bowls and a single out of the pair of spoons next to it. Jensen inclines his head towards her when she reaches his side and slides down the wall beside him, passing over the bowl and spoon.

“Thanks,” he rasps as he lifts the weight from her hands.

“You told him?”  Alona asks despite the fact she’s already got a good idea of the answer.

Jensen nods into the steam. “Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“I,” he flushes and glances away. “I showed him.”

Alona rolls her eyes. Of course the kid went catatonic.

“Have you talked to him about it?”

He ducks his head and that’s all the answer that she needs.

She stretches up until her back pops when she stands and then lets out all the stress in a sigh on her way out the door, closing it on a pointed look.

-

Jensen picks at the stew, eating around the potatoes as he looks anywhere in the room except at the immobile lump on his bed. The sheets end halfway through Jared’s torso, leaving Jensen with an uninhibited view of the tan of his shoulders and the way the muscles work under his skin to accommodate the stretch of his arm curling up over his head like he’s protecting himself, the curve of his bicep, the spill of his hair over Jensen’s pillows.

He doesn’t know how to do this. Jensen is not qualified in the slightest to take care of someone else; he can barely take care of himself. How is he supposed to be responsible for Jared on top of everything? How is he supposed to teach, protect, save? He’s tried before, was slammed right in the face with a situation where he could have taken care of Jared, could have helped, and he fucked it up. Horrendously.

There’s no room for error this time. If Jensen freezes up it’s both of their lives.

Jensen chews at the inner meat of his lower lip.

Man up, he tells himself. Don’t lock up. Don’t do that to him again. He deserves better, but try.

“Uh,” Jensen starts uncomfortably and watches those muscles tense up. “You must really be hungry.”

The statement hangs lamely in the air until Jensen hoists himself up and collects the second bowl and spoon. He hesitates at the edge of the bed before helping himself to a seat next to Jared’s hips, getting the bowl just close enough to smell.

“You should try it,” Jensen lilts, edging the bowl closer. “Come on, Sam makes the best stew.”

Jared peeks out of the crook of his elbow, eye narrowed in suspicion. When he speaks his voice comes out low and small, cracking under the pressure of words. “Who’s Sam?”

“Oh.” Jensen blunders. Of all the questions he hadn’t thought that would be Jared’s first. “She cooks. Takes care of us.”

“And she’s…”

“A wolf, too.”

“Too?”

“Too.”

Jared shudders and ducks back into his arm.

Jensen folds his feet over one another and looks around the room uncomfortably, arm still extended towards Jared with the bowl.

The silence that fills the room is thick and awkward. It makes Jensen want to fidget but instead he persists with, “You really should eat. Normal shift is exhausting, I can’t imagine what change shift must be like.”

Jared peeks again, this time all the way around his arm with both eyes and a furrowed brow. “Change shift?”

“First shift.” Jensen gestures towards the window, where Moon would be if it were night. “When Moon accepts you as worthy and delivers you from humanity instead of casting you to death.”

Jared blinks at him owlishly. “You’re crazy,” he whispers.

Jensen shrugs. “And you’re a werewolf. Eat.”

Jared does take the bowl this time after a few more pointed nudges, shifting his weight onto his back and holding the sheets to his groin as he sits up.

Such a strange gesture, Jensen thinks. Does he think he’s got something down there Jensen’s never seen before? Is he self-conscious? Does he think himself inadequate? If he fears nudity and exposition he’s in for some rude awakenings.

Jensen brings him a pair of sweatpants and dutifully turns his back on a small eye roll when Jared refuses to leave the safety of the sheets while under watch.

He listens to the short crack of the bowl being set down on the ground and the rustle of skin against cloth before the bedsprings are creaking again and Jensen thinks it’s safe to turn back around and spare Jared’s modesty.

“You probably have some questions,” Jensen says as he settles himself on the foot of the bed, mirroring Jared with his legs crossed.

“I’m not actually sure where to begin,” Jared admits. He roots around his bowl for a few long moments, mouth twisted up as he debates which questions have precedence over the others until he finally singles one out above all others. “How do I know this is real?”

Jensen resituates his weight uncomfortably. “What do you mean?”

Jared looks up at him, eyes glossed over with fear and tears. “How do I know this isn’t some delusion or something? How do I know that I haven’t just lost it and slipped into some crazy hysterical dream world to cope with being attacked by wolves or some shit? Werewolves aren’t real. This isn’t real.”

“Jared.” Jensen smiles sadly. “This is the realest thing that’s ever going to happen to you. You went through a lot of changes in a short amount of time and there is no going back. There is no getting better. There is no going home. If you can’t learn to accept your new life there’s going to be consequences you can’t imagine, for both of us. Look at me,” he demands and waits until Jared works up the courage to make eye contact, swallowing thickly as he does. “This is your home now,” Jensen intones. “We are your family. Nothing else matters. We will keep you fed, warm, clothed, sheltered, and safe and all you have to do is accept.”

“Accept?” The bowl trembles in Jared’s hands. “What about my life? My family?”

“What about your family?” Jensen demands. “Are they going to be a problem?” Is your uncle going to come looking for you? Does he care? Is that why you were sleeping in a car in the woods?

Jared looks down at his lap.

“You’re not human anymore,” Jensen says, eyebrows hiking up as he leans forward into Jared’s space emphatically to catch his attention. “You are never going to be human again. Nothing is ever going to be the same. You need to let it go now and accept that this is a world full of things you don’t know and I’m going to teach you how to live in it.”

There are horrors in this world that Jared can’t even fathom, horrors that Jensen can’t explain, and he tries to put them into his voice when he talks. He can’t put his father or hunters or fire or silver or Moon under his tongue when he speaks, but he thinks he gets across the idea that they are in this together now. There is no more Jared and there is no more Jensen. They no longer exist singularly. Without Jensen Jared _is_ going to fuck up and someone –Jensen’s father, hunters, Jared himself- is going to take him down for it.

And for Jensen… Jensen doesn’t know what exactly is in this for him but he can feel from deep in his bones that he needs it, wouldn’t be able to live without it.

Jared stares at him searchingly for a few moments, eyes jumping all over, hounding a tic to show him Jensen’s lying. When he starts nodding it’s slow, dark hair falling in front of his eyes, but steadily grows stronger in his own self-assurance. “Yeah. Okay.”

Jensen lets out a breath. Hard part over. “Okay?”

“Okay.” Jared confirms, voice even stronger now. He pauses for a moment, and then, wistfully: “I think that’s the most I’ve ever heard you say all at once.”

Jensen grins softly and scrubs a hand over his brow. “We need to talk about people you need to contact and where you’re going to stay and stuff, but it can wait until after you’re done eating.”

Jared nods again and tucks into the stew with more vigor.

Jensen reaches over to the desk to pluck up his own bowl and swipes some bread Alona thought to bring with her, tossing a roll in Jared’s direction.

“So, wait,” Jared says as he chews. “Does this mean vampires are real, too?”

-

When Jared was sixteen there was a career fair in the gymnasium of his high school in San Antonio and the man with the thin legs and the thick beard in charge of the booth for the SAPD had thought it was a pretty neat trick when Sandy had dropped her lollipop –courtesy of the florist’s booth- and picked it back up to pop in her mouth and Jared had rattled off a whole list of reasons why she shouldn’t. Not that it was disgusting, even though it was.

Gross, Sandy, you don’t know what’s been on that floor. What if someone hasn’t worn the shoes they’re wearing today since they went on, like, a safari with their parents or something and while they were there they stepped in monkey crap and that monkey had Ebola and you just put that in your mouth and in like a month your spleen’s going to be this huge blood clot and your face is going to melt off and you’re going to crash and bleed out and I’m going to be standing right next to you and you’re going to get gross Ebola blood all over me and then I’ll be infected and who knows who else and you will have been personally responsible for the newest plague to decrease the population of the earth by sixty percent. Go put that in the trash.

The guy –Officer Peters- had laughed at the exchange and somehow it had ended up with him quizzing Jared, making up extravagant situations and seeing what the most ridiculous logic-based answer Jared could come up with was.

Two drug addicts walk into a bar, the owner owes them money but his wife is pregnant and he’s trying to get out of the game- it went on and on.

Jared had rattled off answer after answer, pleased with the attention and the fact that his input was being asked for. After a couple of minutes Officer Peters had scrambled up his hair and Jared had laughed and blushed when the older man had told him that one day he’d make one hell of an analyst if he wanted to.

Jared’s brain has never really worked on the same wavelength as most everyone else’s. His mother used to call him a worrywart but he doesn’t think that’s really true. He eats up situations, consumes them and then spits out every possible conclusion, prepares for the absolute worst but hopes for the best.

It’s the reason why he was able to get himself organized and out of his parents’ house with all his clothes and a plan in under two hours with a concussion four months ago, it’s how he shot Ben the bird over his shoulder on his way out the door with enough food in a bag to last him a solid month without his two jobs pitching in two weeks ago, and it’s pretty much the only reason why Jared hasn’t just given himself up for insane and leapt from the window right now.

Either he’s crazy or he’s not. It doesn’t matter.

Jensen’s here and he’s brought a new regime of reality with him and Jared can accept or perish.

If the new regime even exists at all and Jared’s not jabbering away and messing himself in some high security wing of an institution, jacketed up and locked in a padded room, that is. He’ll deal with the palpable despite the fact that the palpable is telling him that he’s looking at a werewolf and might actually be one himself.

Jared snorts into his bread roll and ignores the tip-tilted puppy-curious look Jensen shoots him in response.

Is this really his life?

He had a plan. Get through school, college, get a job, live.

This is a detour.

This changes very little.

He doesn’t want to be a part of whatever cult Jensen’s babbling about with the moon, he doesn’t want to be stuck here forever; he’s going places.

He chews over a chunk of beef in the stew –and it is a damn good stew, he can practically taste every flavor and they’re all amazing- and watches Jensen sit back contentedly, face open like Jared’s never seen it for reasons that are just starting to make sense.

Jensen doesn’t know him. Sam who made the stew doesn’t know him. He doesn’t owe these people anything and they sure as hell aren’t his family.

He’ll stick around, learn the rules of the new world he’d been forcibly indoctrinated into –consentless.

As soon as he gets a handle on the werewolf thing, though? He’s out. Gone. Back on the road, living his own life on his own terms.

A sharp noise outside of the door distracts him, reminding him that’s there’s a world outside of this room and that world is deafening beyond reason. It sounds like ice cracking if Jared were lying face down across a vast sheet of it and it began to give under his weight, right in his ear. Then there’s squeal, high and sharp like harpies screeching and then a crash, an earthquake, and Jared is screaming, clutching at his ears and kicking himself into the corner of the bed through the deafening roar, so distracted he doesn’t even notice that the stew he just spilled all over himself is scalding.

“It’s okay!” Jensen is shouting and Jared wants to hit him.

Somewhere in the house someone breaks a window or a television or an entire china cabinet, glass tingling and spraying across the floor and Jared feels like he can hear each fragment bounce against the tile, rocking and settling after a few moments with a clatter.

“Jared!”

“Katie!” someone else in the house screams, so unreasonably loud Jared wants to just scream back.

Jared’s fingernails cut into the blank space behind his ears, gouging little half-moons as he tries to distract himself away from the force of the _noise_ of the house.

“Look at me.” His nails are being forcibly removed from his flesh, slippery with blood. “Jared, come on, calm down.”

Jared’s breathing heavily, panting like he just sprinted an entire relay by himself and, just as suddenly as it came on, the noise fades back out into sereneness.

It’s not until Jared’s prying his eyes open that he even realized he closed them and Jensen’s _there,_ in his space. Over him, on top of him, clutching Jared’s hands away from his head and staring at him.

“What?” Jared wheezes, distressed beyond comprehension.

“The front door,” Jensen explains calmly, looking him over, forcing his chin to the side so he can see behind Jared’s ear. “Katie’s always slammed it and I guess she scared Sam a little and she dropped a glass or something.”

“No,” Jared breathes, shaking his chin out of Jensen’s grip. “There is no way that was just a door.”

Jensen gives him another one of those old smiles that’s more pity and regret than actual substance and backs away, knees squishing into the mess of sheets soaked in broth all around Jared.

“It’s going to take some getting used to,” Jensen admits. “I’ll get Sebastian to get you a doctor’s note for meningitis or something. It’ll get you out of classes whenever it gets to be too much, but you’re not going back until you start to actually get used to your new senses.”

“What?” Jared asks just to ask something. He feels full to bursting with newness and he hates it. His head hurts and the candles on the other side of the room stink. “Who’s Sebastian?”

A door.

That was a fucking door.

This is going to take a lot more time than Jared thought.

“I’ll introduce you to people in a minute, if you feel up to it,” Jensen assures as he starts to strip the bed of sheets right from underneath Jared.

People. The people Jensen expects him to treat like family; pack. Well, ‘people.’ They’re not really technically people at all.

Jared cringes to himself and he can hear his own teeth creak. It doesn’t change anything. Just more time he has to add to the clock between himself and freedom.

He’s exhausted. He crawls off the bed to make room for Jensen to work and hits the floor bone-tired, drained. Freeze-dried Jared.

He laughs shakily at the mental image of himself sucked dry of moisture and life and lowers himself to the floor, observing the slip of Jensen’s muscles beneath his skin as he scrubs out what he can of the stains from the mattress. Jared’s body and mind both give out and he sleeps, curled up on the floor like a dog.

-

Jensen hears Jared’s breathing even out while he works over the mattress but he lets him be. It’s been a rough time, Jensen’s not going to deny him a few fidgety hours’ worth of nap time whenever Jared can squeeze them in.

He gets most of the true wet of the stain out of the mattress and figures he can wait until Jared wakes up again to go about fighting the brown of it. He bunches up the soiled sheets and presses them down over the stain before collecting a blanket out of closet.

He leaves Jared tucked up on the clean side of the mattress and takes the dirty bowls and tray with him on his way out. He doesn’t plan to be gone longer than literally a few moments, but he locks the door behind himself on his way out.  Not that the locked door would mean anything really to anyone trying to get in –or out- but it’s the finality of the statement.

“What do you want?” Jensen asks without looking as he turns away.

“Nothing.” Misha shrugs as he peels away from the wall he was loitering against beside Jensen’s door and trails a half step behind him, hands slung into the deep pockets of his open hoodie and shoulders slumped up like he doesn’t care. “Just satisfying my own curiosity.”

“Satisfy it somewhere else,” Jensen mutters under his breath, fighting not to bristle at how Misha’s trailing a half step behind him the entire way down the stairs.

“Oh, baby, talk to dirty to me.”

“What,” Jensen’s tongue clicks against his front teeth with the harsh clack of emphasis on the ‘T’, “do you want?” He’s not fond of repeating himself.

“No need to get tense, Jensen,” Misha tuts right next to Jensen’s ear as he looks over his shoulder to the tray, taking in the two empty bowls. “So he made it through the night, then?”

Jensen jerks the tray away and moves towards the kitchen, ducking Sam’s querying look. The kitchen smells overwhelmingly of cinnamon rolls. She’s stress baking.

“Jensen.” Misha resorts to full-on whining, stomping around him petulantly as Jensen ditches the dishes in the sink. “Come on!”

“Go away,” Jensen hisses mutedly and turns tail, stepping lightly past the office on his way towards the front door. The concrete of the stoop is cold against Jensen’s bare feet and he takes the steps two at a time down to the paved path to the simple concrete slate of their driveway, avoiding the flower pots that are either dead or never had anything in them in the first place. The house is pushed back onto the property, surrounded by tree cover and fenced high on three corners, and to get to the street the driveway is long enough to house six cars comfortably.

They don’t have six cars.

They have a communal ’95 Suburban that gets people where they need to go when it’s too far to walk, Jeff’s ’89 Ford F 150 that runs on hopes and dreams more than gasoline and lives in his driveway, Mark’s cherry ’69 Chevelle that had been more interior than exterior when he’d found it and, now, Jared’s Maverick.

Whatever blood trail there must have been when Alona and them were stupid and panicked enough to think dragging a maimed body through their front door in the middle of the night was a good idea is gone now, scrubbed clean under what Jensen’s sure was Alona’s orchestration.

“Who is he?” Misha persists through his distaste of the cold, nipping at Jensen’s heels as he wrenches the front door of the Maverick open and roots around for the keys. “When do we get to meet him?”

Jensen wants to say no one, never; bark it right in Misha’s face and send him and his invasive interest in the novelty of Jared scuttling right back into the house, but he can’t really. Jared’s his, but he’s not _his._ Jensen is getting to keep him but he doesn’t get to _keep_ him.

He’d told Jared that there was no going back and there isn’t. There’s only forward.

“His name’s Jared.” Jensen mutters as he finds the rabbit foot keychain stuffed deep between the seats. The back seat is a cocoon of horded, mismatched blankets layered up thicker than the padding of the seat itself and on the floorboards there’s a laptop that looks like it was scrounged up out of a dumpster. Jensen turns away.

“Yeah?” Misha grins. “What’s he like? How’s he taking it? C’mon, man, spill the deets.”

Jensen shrugs with one shoulder and Misha ambles behind him as he circles to the trunk and jams the key in the lock. “He’s taking it pretty well, all things considered. He, uh, passed out once, but that’s about it. He’s nice. Funny.”

Misha props himself up against the side of the car as Jensen pops the trunk and overwhelming assault of _Jared_ comes flooding out, smothering every other scent in the direct vicinity.

“Holy shit,” Misha coughs, covering his mouth. “That’s ripe. How long have those clothes been in there?”

A little over three months, Jensen guesses. The better question is when was the last time they were washed?

“Here.” Jensen tosses the first handful of clothes at Misha, who flounders to catch them.

“Why are all of his clothes in the trunk of his car?” Misha asks, face creased up in serious lines that hadn’t existed moments prior. “Did you already go get them?”

Jensen unloads another armful of dirty clothes onto him without saying anything.

“Where was this kid when we found him?”

Jensen hesitates a half second before grabbing up Jared’s boxers. They’re paisley patterned.

“What are we going to say to his family?”

Socks, shirts, pants, sweatshirts.

“Do you know him?”

There’s a shirt jammed up in the back that Jensen has to lean in deeply to snag.

“Is that why you picked now to stand up to your dad?”

It’s dark blue, a V-neck. Jensen’s never seen Jared wear it but he thinks it’d be a nice color on him.

“Jensen!”

“I don’t know, Misha!” Jensen snaps, lies, and Misha startles. The silence that follows sounds like vacant street and winter, empty and frigid.

Misha purses his lips, obviously unsatisfied.

Jensen huffs out a breath and slams the trunk shut, sound reverberating down the street to the other empty driveways and the huge, blank brown lawns and rattling around inside Jensen’s hollow head. “Just,” he says, scrubbing over his forehead. “Help me get his clothes into the laundry. I’ll see if maybe I can talk him into coming down for dinner.”

“Yeah?” Misha shuffles on his feet. “Mark and Seb and Matt and me, we’ve got room in the basement if he-”

“No,” Jensen cuts him off, a little too quick, a little too harsh. He clears his throat. “I mean, I’ve got room. It’ll be fine.”

“You sure?” Misha asks dubiously.

Jensen picks at the t-shirt in his hands and tries not to think too hard about the fact that, after a wash, it’s going into Jensen’s closet.

“I’m sure.”

The trunk closes with a sharp, echoing crack and before Jensen goes inside he snags the computer and two of the blankets from the backseat.

-

When Jared wakes up again he’s back in the bed and the stew-stained sweatpants are MIA. They’re seriously going to have to have a talk about that whole clothes stealing thing and how Jared’s really not okay with it.

It’s late afternoon, though it’s felt like late afternoon all day, and the room’s empty.

Jared sits up, rubbing his eyes out blearily.

“Jensen?” he slurs, half expecting Jensen to just materialize out of thin air because that would make just as much sense as the rest of his life in the past forty-eight hours and who knows, maybe that’s just a thing werewolves can do. Jared figures that it’s no dice when Jensen doesn’t just show up.

Jared’s jaw cracks on a yawn and he rolls out of bed –Jensen’s bed, he guesses, and the thought of waking up naked in Jensen’s bed in this context makes him snort and shake his head. Christ, this entire situation is so screwed.

He purposefully doesn’t think about it as he bundles up the blanket around his shoulders like a cloak when he slips out of the bed, tearing it from where the corners are tucked up underneath the mattress and not feeling too bad about wrecking Jensen’s hard work because it’d going to take literally less than sixteen seconds to fix back up and also Jensen technically kidnapped him.

The bare floor is cold under his feet but he persists, standing and stretching out cramped up muscles. He walks a short circuit of the room just to prove he can and to kill some time inspecting the true barrenness to see if someone’s coming or if he’s really going to have to traipse out into the hall in nothing but an old blue blanket.

He comes up short at the mess of candles.

Jared’s manager at Yankee Candle, Hannah, had said that Jensen was their best customer, and Jared hadn’t thought she was lying, but more exaggerating the truth of the situation.

She wasn’t.

The whole surface of the desk is packed tight with at least three hundred dollars’ worth of candles, a small space cleared where the girl with the soft voice from earlier had needed it.

He sorts through a few, vaguely interested in the collection because it’s literally the only thing in the room to be interested in outside of the total lack of things to be interested in.

They’re all well used, ugly and distorted from the total realization of their purpose and Jared picks through the congregation, trying to see if he can find _the_ ugliest, most well-used candle.

He picks out a Macintosh and an Evergreen, laughing lightly to himself at how desolate the wax is. Jared’s not surprised, though. Those and the baked goods scented candles are the candles that really need restocking at a consistent basis. Another candle near the middle catches his eye, absolutely dismal in comparison to the others and Jared plucks up the jar.

_Man Town._

He can hear the floorboards bowing now, accommodating body weight and he ditches the candle back where he found it, scrambles the jars up a little bit for good measure before the door opens and he jumps.

“You’re awake.” Jensen comes up short in the doorway. He’s wearing clothes now, worn jeans stretched too baggy and too long like they haven’t been washed since they were purchased and an old black _Metallica_ t-shirt that Jared is almost positive isn’t really his. “Sorry, I didn’t mean for you to wake up alone. Misha and I were grabbing your clothes.”

Jared opens his mouth to ask who Misha is but then the rest of the sentence sinks in and all that comes out is: “My clothes?”

“Yeah.” Jensen scratches at the back of his neck. “The stuff that was in the trunk of your car? Sam said to soak it in some vinegar first to get rid of the stains, but it’ll be done in about twenty minutes.”

Jared’s eyes narrow and he hitches up the blanket higher around his shoulders as Jensen chews on the pink swell of his lower lip.

He’s too good looking. Jared should have known that nothing good could have come out of trying to make friends with Jensen. Things that beautiful are predestined for tragedy.

That or the very simple fact that Jared noticed he was beautiful at all.

Jared shakes away the thought before it can start.

“You’re doing my laundry?” his tone comes out a shade snide, uncomfortable with the idea of Jensen handling his dirty boxers, worming his way into Jared’s used clothes without his permission.

Jensen flushes. “I mean, not all of it,” he says defensively, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Jared inquires, voice getting a little more hysterical because he’s allowed to be a little emotional given the circumstances. “What does that even mean? Where’s the rest of my clothes?”

“Look, you’re upset,” Jensen starts.

“I’m not upset,” Jared denies sharply, because he’s not upset about the clothes; not really. He’s upset about the invasion, like changing his whole entire shitty life and making it a crazier, shittier life by invading the literal fabric of him wasn’t enough – oh, no. Jensen had to break into his car and steal his underpants, too.

Is nothing sacred?

“Okay,” Jensen says hesitantly and Jared thinks he might be allergic to confrontation.

They stand in silence for an uncomfortable moment, Jared scrunching his naked toes into the hardwood floor and Jensen shifts uncomfortably.

“Do you want something to wear?” Jensen asks abruptly.

“No,” Jared snarks, pulling the blanket tighter around his torso. “I want to walk around in nothing but a blanket forever.”

Jensen stares at him blankly for a few moments, long after the zest of the joke elapses and Jared realizes that he’s trying to hash out whether Jared’s actually joking or not, eyebrows doing that wrinkle-crease thing in the center that they do when he’s trying to figure out if Jared’s laughing at him or with him.

“I have clothes,” Jensen offers, uncertain.

Jared exhales softly and nods, squeezing his eyes shut against the encroaching headache. “Thank you.”

Jensen’s closet is a network of shelves with clothes stuffed into every nook and cranny or folded neatly and stacked cleanly. Jared’s tossed a pair of light wash jeans that feel slippery-thin in between his fingers and a _Coca-Cola_ t-shirt that he’s seen on Jensen before.

The jeans are a little loose in the waist but Jared’s always been fond of belts and while the t-shirt stretches across his shoulders the fibers make room for him and mold to his shape rather than demanding the opposite. He doesn’t ask for underwear and Jensen doesn’t offer any, leaving Jared with the short moral dilemma of what’s worse: going commando in another boy’s jeans or wearing his boxers. He’s still pondering the question when he realizes Jensen’s beaming at him.

 “What?” Jared looks down at himself.

“Nothing,” Jensen mumbles, but it doesn’t feel like nothing. He changes the subject. “Do you think you’d be up to meeting a few people?” he asks, and then adds quickly, “Just a couple of them, I don’t even think everyone’s home right now, but if you came downstairs with me to grab something to eat you could see a couple of people and it’d be no big deal –but we can wait if you want to, it doesn’t have to be, like, a thing and, I mean, this is all really new to you and I don’t want to overwhelm you or anything, just-”

The smile that tugs across Jared’s lips is soft and reluctant. As far as he knows Jensen doesn’t have conversations long enough with other people to really get into babbling so this whole thing where he spews words and looks wide-eyed like he’s driving a car with the break-line cut is just for Jared. Which is a shame because if more people took the time to talk to Jensen they’d learn that inside of the social pariah recluse is a _werewolf_ social pariah recluse who hoards candles.

“Alright,” Jared interjects before Jensen gets to anything that will make him regret trying to speak in full sentences and Jensen looks relieved.

“Yeah?” he smiles cautiously.

“Yeah.” Jared shrugs. “Why don’t you give me the grand tour while you’re at it?”

Jensen ducks his head on a nod.

The upstairs landing is all dark glossy hardwood and pale blue walls with intricate crown molding and Jared can tell already that it’s the largest, nicest house he’s been in for a while right off the bat. He trails a half step behind Jensen down the hallway, trying not to be obvious in his awe. Nothing worse than coming off like a hick in a werewolf’s house.

He wonders vaguely when the whole adding ‘werewolf’ to average phrases thing is going to get less funny to him as they pass by a few open doors.

“This is Katie, Gen, Danneel, and Alona’s room.” Jensen gestures to the first door, leaning in to see if anyone’s inside but finding it abandoned.

“What, all four of them?” Jared asks, peering over Jensen’s shoulder to find a mess of a room. Clothes everywhere, books and pens and makeup brushes, wands, compacts scattered all over the dresser wedged between the two twin beds. The comforter on the right bed is a gauzy light white with ringlets of embroidered wildflowers, all of it bunched up near the footboard of the scarred frame; the other is pale yellow, checked with a transparent floral print and strewn from the bed to the floor. A mirror mounted over the dresser reflects Jared back on himself, skin glowing a light pink from the sunset blushing in through the windows and the head of each bed as he leans over the darkness of Jensen’s shoulder and for the first time he realizes that there wasn’t a mirror in Jensen’s room.

“Yeah,” Jensen says, like it’s no big deal, like he isn’t implying that four teenage girls sleep between two beds and cohabitate in such small quarters.

“Where do they sleep?” Jared feels his voice climbing high and he can’t really explain why he’s so distressed on their behalf.

Jensen shrugs. “Sometimes in the beds, sometimes on the floor, sometimes all together, sometimes on the couches downstairs, sometimes in someone else’s bed; same as all of us.”

“Why?” Jared asks sharply, half laughing at the absurdity of so many people packed together like sardines without their own personal space. He and his brother had shared a room when he was younger and they’d thrown biweekly fits about the invisible line drawn down the center of the space and who was crossing it when until finally, fed up, his parents had converted the office space into another bedroom. Jared can’t imagine that four times over.

Jensen looks at him like he’s the strange one in this situation and flushes. “It’s not weird.”

“I didn’t say it was weird.” Jared quickly backs off. “Just… different.”

Jensen glances to his feet and points down the hall to the next open door. “Bathroom.” His finger jumps to the door next to it. “Christian, Tom, Mike.” The door at the end of the hall, the master suite. “Sam, Rebecca and the little ones. Mark and Misha and Matt and Seb are in the basement.”

Jared nods along like all those names mean something to him. He glances into the other bedroom –Christian, Tom, and Mike’s- and notices there’s two beds there, too. Dark blue sheets, twisted up black comforters, the stink of teenage boy radiating into the hall. Two beds between three boys. Three boys to a room. Everyone sharing a room except Jensen.

Jared clears his throat but doesn’t say anything.

The stairs are dark stain with white backing they don’t creak when Jensen leads him down and the fact that they don’t feels stranger and more foreboding than if they had. Jared’s never used stairs that didn’t creak, didn’t know it was a standard he held stairs to.

The house feels uncomfortably tight to Jared, as if it were a real house wrapped up in cellophane. The tile in the foyer is pristine and the windows bordering the door are spotless. The space is wide open but it still feels stifling.

Jensen is wearing some t-shirt he found in a consignment shop for fifteen cents and his jeans are too long and the walls are too clean for him. The house is too new to host an old soul.

“Living room,” Jensen points off to the right of the foyer where the flooring shifts away from the ceramic tile back to dark hardwood. Jared can see a well-loved leather sofa, worn down in supple creases open for bodies, and a big television that is older than the house itself.

Jared hums an interested sound of ascent and turns to follow Jensen down the hall but comes up short at the sight of the second closed door he’s seen in the whole house.

“What-” he starts to ask but then there’s a hand around his bicep, digging in deep and dragging him harshly away.

“That’s the office,” Jensen hisses, voice low and eyes shifty and if Jared didn’t know any better he’d say Jensen was afraid. “We aren’t allowed in there, no one ever goes in there.”

“Why?” Jared asks before he can stop himself, feeling suddenly like Beauty to Jensen’s Beast and the office is his West Wing.

“My father.”

“Oh,” Jared says, like that response made any sense at all.

Of course Jensen has a father. A mother, too, if _werewolf_ biology follows the same basic fundamentals as the rest of the natural world. It would make sense that they were around here somewhere, Jared supposes. He just wasn’t expecting it to be the downstairs office and he wasn’t expecting to feel the tendrils of anxiety taking up residence in his stomach at the mention.

“Just,” Jensen licks his lips and glances at the door, “Don’t… look at him.”

“Look at him?” Jared parrots.

“Or talk around him or… anything.” Jensen nods. “In fact, avoid him. Just don’t go in there. Or around there. He’s not happy about you being here.”

“He’s not?” Jared repeats, slow and a little nervous, glancing back at the innocuous white door.

“He wanted to kill you.”

Jared ekes out a sound that lacks true description.

“It’s okay, though,” Jensen rushes to assure, face wide open, nodding already like he can will Jared’s knees to solidify and soothe away the queasy terror of another near-death experience Jared hadn’t even been aware that he had. “I told him you weren’t going to be a problem, that I’d make sure everything went smooth.”

Jared feels his brow pinch up and his mouth open, tongue working as he hunts for some singular emotion swirling inside of him to express with his next words, but ops instead for a shaky, mostly exhaled, “Why?”

Jensen shrugs. “I can’t…” His hands flutter out a gesture towards Jared, indicating the whole of him even as Jensen keeps eye contact with the floor. “Not.”

A word jumpstarts on Jared’s lips, a short “I-” that fizzles out on the tip of his tongue before he can explain that he wasn’t asking why Jensen spared him, but more why his father wasn’t inclined. But then the beautiful innocence of the phrase and the stupid wide-eyed look on Jensen’s face –like the world’s a surprise and each word out of his mouth is a marvel and each second he’s standing upright and walking around is a conquered struggle- hits Jared and it wasn’t the answer Jared was looking for but he nods and accepts it because it’s the one he needed.

“Okay,” he rasps and a small smile breaks Jensen’s face.

“Food?”

Jared jerks his head again and lets Jensen lead him down the hall, acknowledging which doors are the basement’s and the bathroom’s and the coat closet’s the media room converted to bedroom’s, the sun room’s, and the side door to the path that leads to the shed as Jensen points them out.

Jared can hear the bustle and scuff of the kitchen long before he sees it in a high definition clarity that scares him. Plates clattering, chairs scraping, feet padding, low voices murmuring, pots burbling, it’s all in his ears, inside his head so clearly that he has a map of the room plotted before Jensen leads him through the door.

“A few people?” Jared chokes into the back of Jensen’s neck, ducking for cover.

There’s maybe thirty people packed like bustling sardines in between the kitchen and the dining room, where they’re hauling in a second table to set on the end of the first to accommodate the lot of them and they all turn and stare as soon as Jared breaks the threshold, all those noises dying out instantaneously.

The first thing that really strikes Jared is how much skin is exposed in the room. No, alright; that’s a lie. The first thing that really strikes him is that he’s never seen a room so full of exclusively white people; even since the move to small town Vermont brought about the significant culture shock of not realizing that San Antonio was practically a social mecca; even in the God fearing corner suburbs Jared was born and bred in. He missed the diversity of Big City Texas the exact second he realized that it was something that could be missed, something that people lived without, and swore to himself that he’d finish up here quickly and move to somewhere with _people_.

It makes sense if Jared put a half second of thought to it: cities, especially cities in _Te-has_ that reasonably close to border, invite people in, offer opportunity - and backwoods North was too far from any economic crux to have been of any appeal to immigrants through the rush at the turn of the century because the ground never grew fertile enough, nor the company inviting enough, for any outsider to put down real roots. And Jensen’s family is a clan –pack- bred in tightly to themselves, unyielding and potentially just as unwelcoming as a town founded by hypocritical, xenophobic puritans.

Still, never before in Jared’s whole life has he been so entirely exposed to a bleached pallet of _same._ Emphasis on _exposed._ Pale chests and pale arms and pale, gangly legs. Skin everywhere.

“Uh…” Jensen stammers at the wall of people staring.

“Jensen!” A slip of a girl with golden hair around her shoulders and long, long legs up to the hem of her yellow check babydoll sundress wedges her way between two men seven inches taller than her, jostling them out of her way. She smiles big and bright and white, like how Jared’s little sister used to smile and he feels a debilitating stab of hurt and nostalgia that buckles his knees and makes breathing a labor. She beams and bounds up to the door, zero of the hesitation anyone else in the room has, and pecks a kiss on Jensen’s cheek.

Jared’s close enough to hear her whisper in his ear while she’s on her tiptoes, cheek pressed to Jensen’s. “You’re okay. Relax.” She pulls away, smile still so big and so like Megan’s, and says, louder: “And this must be Jared, right?”

“Hi,” is all Jared can get out before he’s yanked down by a small, warm hand on the back of his neck and folded into a crushing hug, arms flailing slightly at his sides as he’s hooked in and pressed tight. “Uh.”

“It’s so great to finally meet you,” she chirrups right in his ear, fingernails carding through the hair at the nape of his neck with an odd tenderness that Jared hasn’t earned, doesn’t deserve, and feels uncomfortable receiving. “You look great!” Just as quickly as she was too close, suddenly she’s far away, holding him at arm’s length and looking him over. She’s glowing. “I’m Alona.”

“Oh,” Jared says and feels himself light up in response. A name he recognizes. “Oh! Oh my god, hi!”

Alona grins at him and shoots Jensen a quick glance that seems to speak volumes that Jared can’t hear because he sends her a thankful little smile back and she’s grabbing his hand and dragging him into the room. “You probably want to meet everybody, right? And then we can eat, Sam and Emily roasted lamb, you’ll love it.”

“Okay,” Jared says just to say something, allowing himself to be dragged up to a weathered looking woman with tawny brown hair and smile lines.

“Sam,” the woman smiles gently and offers him a hand.

“Jared.” Jared takes the hand.

“I know.” She brings up her other hand and gives his a small pat and before Jared can respond he’s being hustled down the line.

“Danneel, Genevieve, Katie, Adrianne,” Alona rattles off, and the four girls in summer shorts and bare feet sitting at the island who look like they’ve stolen the sun and slathered it all over their skin nod in turn.

“He’s too skinny.” Danneel leans back in her chair with a slick smile coiling up her lips, arm pressed into Genevieve’s and she tugs on Katie’s hair playfully. “He won’t survive in wolf country.”

Adrianne throws her head back in a toss of blonde curls and howls and they laugh when Jared winces a little.

Alona pushes him along. “This is Christian and behind him is Tom and behind Tom is Mike, way back there.”

“Right, yeah,” Jared breathes and intentionally doesn’t make eye-contact with Christian. “We go to school together, I’ve seen you guys around.”

Mike peeks out over Tom’s shoulder tentatively, ducking away quickly when Jared glances his way and Tom smiles apologetically on his behalf.

“Over there in the dining room is Jon, Sean, Norman, Patrick, Jamie, Neil, Poppy, and Rachel.” Alona reaches up to point them out over the heads of the room where the older men and women are arguing over how to set up the second table. Jared only has a really decent view of two of their faces through the doorway. Jon and Norman are leaning up against the wall watching the other bicker, Jon weathered with longer blond hair and a gaunt face where Norman’s dark and round and smirking at Sean, who’s holding his hands out in exasperation at Jamie as she’s trying to tell him how to fold out the legs.

“I’m fuckin’ telling you it’s not gonna work!” Sean’s voice rises.

“When’s the last time you set up a table?” Patrick demands sarcastically, voice clipped and posture straight, all business. “Are you even qualified?”

“It’s fucking table, man,” Norman scoffs. “Calm down.”

“There’s a right way and a wrong way!” Jamie throws up her hands and behind her back Neil rolls his eyes.

“Listen,” Rachel snaps and cocks a hip. “If you don’t stop dicking around and get the table set up I’m gonna snap your heads off your necks, mmkay?” She cocks her head to the side, smiling saccharine sweet.

Jared startles when Alona curls a hand back around his elbow and gives him a reassuring smile.

There’s a congregation of boys –young men really, older than Jared but lacking in actual maturity- sitting at the table shirtless and tattooed to the gills. The one on the edge is in just jeans and a pair of boots which are propped up on the dark wood table. He has short black hair and blue eyes and low down on his hips in places where Jared shouldn’t be looking, isn’t looking, there are two stars inked black into his hipbones.

“Matt,” Alona declares and the boy nods while he looks Jared over. Next to his feet are a pair of crossed arms enveloped in what Jared is absolutely confident in labeling the ugliest sweater he’s ever seen. It’s electric blue, like the guy’s eyes and he scents the air, loud and obvious in Jared’s direction. “Misha.” The guy behind him is in board shorts as has a shark tooth strung from his neck on a length of twine. He cuffs Misha in the back of the head. “Sebastian.” There’s an arm slung around Sebastian’s shoulder and the guy connected to it is sitting in the open window, one arm curled over his knee so Jared can see the Chinese symbol tattooed into his shoulder blade, cigarette dangling from his lips. “And Mark.”

Mark takes a long drag on his cigarette and exhales through his nose so that smoke curls out from his nostrils, looking Jared over with glazed eyes. A smile coils up the corner of his lips and all of that liquid muscle of his body rolls, fluid and dangerous when he turns to stub the cigarette out on his own thigh. “Fresh meat,” he rumbles.

Sebastian snorts. “Babe.”

“Fresh babe,” Misha grins.

“Pedophiles.” Matt rolls his eyes. “He’s, like, a day old. Gross.”

Jared swallows and shifts on his feet, glances over his shoulder to try and find Jensen but only seeing Danneel and Katie snickering into each other’s shoulders.

Jared’s terrified. His knees would be wobbling but he’s locked them up which he knows is bad by the hot-cold feel of the sweat springing up on his hairline, but he’s never in his life been surrounded by so many predators. A shaky little laugh bursts from his lips and he tries, he really tries, to school his face, beat back the blush because taking time to adjust isn’t going to be doing him any favors and like hell is he going to back down.

Misha snorts and knocks Matt’s feet off the table and Matt socks him hard in the shoulder, prompting a short slap fight that turns into a full-on scuffle that somehow sucks in Sebastian while Mark laughs in smoky bursts.

Alona has to tug him away because at some point his legs stopped working properly. Jared feels overwhelmed in the most basic sense of the word: a rabbit in the wolves’ den and he shuffles his feet when he’s jammed in front of an older couple.

“David and Emily,” Alona introduces. She’s smooth with how she doesn’t let go of his arm from where she grabbed him, squeezing once soothingly but not letting go, anchoring.

“Excuse them.” Emily rolls her eyes and the chair Misha was sitting in clatters to the ground with Misha, Sebastian, and Matt all in it, Jared wincing at the noise. “We haven’t changed anyone in… quite some time.” She looks up to David for affirmation and David shrugs.

“Rebecca’s upstairs putting the little ones down for a nap,” Alona explains. “You’ll meet her when she comes down for dinner. And over there’s-“

“Jeff,” a deeper voice interjects, all baritone and Jared jumps and turns to find broad shoulders, tan skin, dark beard, and a skull-and-cross-bones tattoo inked into a bare pectoral. Jared’s eyes don’t mean to take a brief tour of the torso –finding a cross on one bicep and a sparrow on the other- before he looks up to white wedge of a smile through a salt and pepper beard and warm eyes, wrinkled in the corners. He exudes a sort of ambient calm, the casual, unoppressive aura oozing from his pores and seeping into Jared’s like his easy control is contagious.

Jared blinks.

Jeff extends a hand and Jared takes it without thinking, giving as good as he gets when he shakes.

“Have we… met?” Jared asks tentatively, something about Jeff’s smile and the way he carries himself ringing all sorts of bells.

“You’re that skinny new busboy at Cantina that Holly’s always on about?” Jeff grins.

 “I guess.” Jared makes a sour face. Hostesses have big mouths.

Jared gets a slap to the shoulder so hard that he stumbles and wheezes, palm open and familiar.

“I deliver for the butcher on Wednesdays and Fridays,” Jeff rumbles on a smile. “You’d‘ve seen me around.”

He squeezes Jared’s shoulder once before surrendering it back but it takes a few more seconds to recover his breath.

His brother’s name is Jeff, too.

“This is my wife, Hilarie,” Jeff says, pulling a beautiful brunette up to his side and she smiles graciously.

“Hi,” Jared smiles back. Exhales. Turns back towards the room.

They’re all watching him, a marvel among marvels and Jared feels squirmy with the urge to bolt away from their dissecting eyes. Jared looks for Jensen and finally finds him tucked into a corner in the back, arms crossed up over his chest as he watches on, impassive and uninvolved with the rest of the ‘pack,’ who all group tight and touch often.  He clears his throat uncomfortably and, at a loss for anything else to say, mumbles: “You have a lovely home.”

“House.”

“What?” Jared turns to Alona and most of the attention in the room redirects to her.

She blinks like she just realized she spoke aloud. “House,” she reiterates awkwardly. “It’s not… it’s not a home until it has a name.”

Jared doesn’t know what that means but he smiles like he does. He’s sweating and his face hurts with it.

-

Alona’s hand spasms in the air behind Jared’s back, not sure where to touch to get his heartbeat to stop rabbit footing around his ribcage. She’s sure that she, Jeff, and Hilarie are the only ones close enough to actually hear it, it’s ratcheted up so loud.

Alona feels for Jared, she really does. She can see the sweat bead at the base of his hairline and the tremble of his knees. It’s too much too soon, throwing everyone at him, and he’s completely overwhelmed.

But…

_Everyone._

Alona beams and looks around and everyone’s there, pack crowded together in one room because they all wanted a chance to see the new kid and pass their judgments, but they’re all still here about to eat dinner together.

She finally decides the shoulders are neutral enough and settles a hand on Jared’s shoulder blade. He flinches a little but ultimately settles after glancing her way. His eyes soften when she smiles so she keeps doing it.

Jensen edges a step closer and Alona could hug every single person in the room.


	8. Chapter 8

  
Jensen watches Jared burn out fast while they eat, face stuck in that same eager-to-please mask he wore the first day of school, staying firmly affixed to his features even as his eyes fizzle out like a popped light bulb. He scoots closer to Jensen inch by inch in the eight minutes it takes him to eat his lamb and fight back that sticky clot of tears in his throat when he answers Misha and Rachel’s stupid questions with tact and charm and lies under the watchful eye of the whole pack.

_Well, my parents are dead, ma’am. Car crash. When I was seven. No siblings to speak of. Been living with my uncle, but he got ill and couldn’t take care of me. I’m eighteen in a few months, figured I could take care of myself for a bit and couch surfing loses its charm quick._

Jared stammers and when he laughs it’s a little too loud. He scoots a half inch nearer to Jensen. Trying to draw closer to the only familiar thing in the room, Jensen guesses and leans in to press their shoulders together in what’s supposed to be a comforting little butt, emboldened by Jared actively tilting towards him but Jared startles and flinches away.

His eyes skip all over the room flightily and even Jensen can see he’s overwhelmed. Jensen can’t remember the last time they were all together in a room at once, let alone under the same roof, and feels like a jackass for leading Jared to believe that he wouldn’t have to face them all.

Well, not all of them.

Jensen glances to the empty chair at the head of the table and ducks his head.

They’re loud. They squabble over seared lamb and brown rolls, touching each other in what Jensen guesses someone like Jared would consider inappropriateness –bare skin sliding all over as they rub affectionately and steal food out of mouths playfully. Gen headbutts Matt gently in the shoulder as she steals his drink, nuzzling even as he rolls his eyes and swipes the mashed potatoes off her plate in reciprocation. She licks the edge of his jaw and Jared’s fingers shake.

Jensen feels self-conscious to the point of nausea. It’s his raggedy boots all over again but a million times worse because it’s his raggedy family. Broken, strange, inhuman.

Too much, too soon.

“C’mon,” Jensen interrupts Misha mid-question, standing abruptly and Jared nearly trips over himself following him out of dining room.

“Jensen! C’mon!”

“You’re no fun!”

“Jen!”

“Spoilsport!”

“We were just getting to know him, don’t be such a prick!”

“He isn’t yours!”

“Hog!”

“Sorry,” Jensen mumbles for what feels like the millionth time.

“No problem, man.” Jared’s smile doesn’t unscrew from his face even as he tries to curl in on himself. “Don’t worry about it.”

Jensen tries to rub out the premature creases of his forehead as he steps into his bedroom, Jared following behind, stinking to high heaven of discomfort.

Somewhere in the back of his mind Jensen had known that it would have been too much to ask for Jared to stop lying about himself the second Jensen took him in. He isn’t going to open up like a day lily just because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and has to deal with a shitty situation with an inept tour guide to hold his hand the whole way. He’s still the kid that told Jensen he had a cold two weeks ago. He’s just going to be sleeping in Jensen’s bed now.

“What’s wrong?” Jensen asks when he notices Jared come up short in the middle of the room, staring blankly at the bed.

“Huh?” Jared startles slightly. “Oh. Sorry. I just…” He rubs at the back of his neck and glances around. “I had work.”

“Work?” Jensen repeats.

“Yeah, like… my job,” Jared says, pauses, and then buzzes out a “ssss” sound, pluralizing. A small stroke of helplessness crosses over his face and the mask cracks up. “I guess I can’t go back to work for a while. It’d be hard to explain…”   His eyes lose focus again.

“I…” Jensen starts, stops, licks his lips. “I have money…”

Jared eyes sharpen up and he scoffs. “I don’t want your money, Jensen. I can take care of myself, don’t worry about it.”

Always so dismissive.

Jensen’s fingers drum along his thigh and he wants to tell Jared that he doesn’t have to take care of himself because he’s got Jensen now and they’re pack and that’s going to mean something, but Jared’s just a few hours old still. It’ll take time.

“Okay.” Jensen nods.

“Sorry,” Jared sighs again and combs his fingers through his hair. “I don’t mean to be a dick, just, I feel like I’m losing control of my life, y’know? It’s a lot to take in all at once.”

“Like you had a whole lot of control to begin with,” Jensen mutters under his breath.

“What?” Jared squints.

“Nothing.” Jensen shrugs the question off. “Don’t worry about it. You should get some sleep.”

“Here?” Jared voice wants to rise up an octave but he’s too exhausted to conjure the scandal.

“Yeah.” Where else was he expecting to sleep?

“I mean…” Jared looks around the room. “In your bed?”

Their bed, now.

Jensen doesn’t say that. Instead he tries to copy some of Alona’s facial expressions and says, “I’ll sleep on the floor, it’s not a big deal.”

“We’re sharing a room.” Jared seems to be just tapping into the concept. “Like- like Katie and them?”

Jensen nods slowly for him. It’s a pretty simple notion, even for someone who’s been sleeping in a car for however long. It might take some getting used to if Jared never shared space with anyone before but Jensen can’t give him any space that they don’t have and isn’t willing to sacrifice the proximity just for Jared’s comfort at the risk that something goes wrong and Jensen isn’t close enough to react.

“I’m going to go for a run,” Jensen relents in their silent staring contest first. “Give you some time to get comfortable. Lock the door, don’t let anybody in.”

Jared opens his mouth, maybe to ask a question, but Jensen’ already crawling across the bed and jamming the window open, stripping off his shirt as he slithers out onto the slope of the roof below. From there it’s a reach, a climb, and a hop towards the ground. Jared’s still watching him as he jumps the back fence in the dark and disappears into the woods.

He doesn’t go far, but he gives Jared space until sun breaks.

-

Jared dreams about coins being pressed into his eyes and his mouth being sewn shut to quiet his screaming, fingers snapping as he struggles and Death trusses him up with bony hands, wraps him in white. Those coins balance and totter on his eyelids but never fall. He dreams that he’s being lowered into the ground, wet black earth pulling him deeper into the cold until he hits the bottom and he can’t see it but he knows that there’s only a small square of yellow-brown dust clouds above him. He screams into the stitches and dirt hits his face.

He wakes up paralyzed with fear and delirious with anxiety. He curls up tight into pillows that aren’t his own, feeling like his back is exposed even though he’s pressed hard into the wall, and he sobs quietly in deep, hitching drags like he hasn’t since the first time Ben hit him. Crying himself to sleep feels childish, but he’s shaking and alone. Alone, alone, alone.

He wants to go home.

The sun is up by the time Jared actually wakes up, inhaling deep the scent of fabric softener and Jensen all around him as he stretches into waking. Jensen’s sitting on the floor next to the bed with his eyes closed, head rolled back on the mattress next to Jared’s knees, neck bared to the room with his forearms propped up on his knees. He looks almost serene there, a statue still wearing a ratty sweatshirt zipped up to the halfway point of his breastbone and jeans with the knees blown out. His fingers are long out of the cuffs of the black sleeves, curling into empty air. Sun falls over the bed in thick stripes, contouring over Jared’s hip and the edge of Jensen’s cheekbone, catching golden blond in his hair.

Jared curls his arms around the pillow and buries his nose into the grey-blue casing.

“Awake?” Jensen rumbles without opening his eyes, throaty with lack of sleep.

Jared nods on a mild yawn, like Jensen can see him with his eyes shut.

The corner of Jensen’s mouth tugs up slightly but he doesn’t make any move to chase Jared out of his bed.

There’s something off about the house and it takes Jared a few long moments to realize it’s too quiet. Not clattering pots or scrambling feet, heavy breathing or shifting hardwood. Jared can’t hear a thing. He leans up, propping himself upright to listen closer and the sheet falls away from his chest. He’s still wearing the clothes Jensen gave him yesterday.

“Alona, Katie, and Chris went to school,” Jensen answers the unasked question, eyes slitting open lazily. “I think Mike and Tom stayed home. Sam and Rebecca took the little ones to the park. Mark, Seb, Danni, and Gen went to work. Misha and Matt just got back in and crashed. Sean’s out back fixing the heater.”

“What time is it?” Jared sits up taller, looking around for a clock. He automatically gropes for his cellphone out of habit but remembers after a bleary second that he doesn’t have a cellphone anymore.

Jensen rolls his head back, neck arching up as he squints out the window. “A little after eleven. I thought you’d want to sleep in.”

“What I want,” Jared mutters into his palms as he scrubs his hands over his face in an attempt to rouse himself more awake, “is to not miss any more school.”

Jensen snorts and rolls his eyes. “Why?”

Normally Jared would scoff. School has been his life lately. He’s gone to school with broken bones and internal bleeding recently, he thinks he’s going to be okay muscling through lycanthropy. He has a test in Statistics and a project due in Political Science, and if he doesn’t show up for a day or two Chad’s going to start getting needy and then it hits him.

Really, really hits him.

Not in his bullshit-y ‘I might be crazy, so just hang on for the ride whatever’ way, but in reality.

He’s a fucking werewolf and he’s worried about his political science project. The political science project that was assigned a week ago when he was a different person, a different species. When he goes back he’ll be the thing his friends are afraid of, the thing they whisper about behind their hands at the lunch tables. Weird, strange, dangerous. Freak.

“Shit!” Jensen scrambles when Jared starts to hyperventilate, dragging down thin gasps of air on wheezes as his muscles start to seize up hard. He tries to slap Jensen’s hands away from touching him but he’s too weak, jittery, and he can’t coordinate the basic grace necessary to stop Jensen from hauling him off the mattress and out the door. He feels exposed from every angle, open for the world to sink its teeth into and the walls are growing taller and his vision’s blurring up as he stumbles beside Jensen on jerky legs to a nowhere destination in an empty house.

Jared’s panicking and he’s a werewolf. Jared can’t breathe and he’s a werewolf. Jared’s being dragged into a bathroom and he’s a werewolf. Jared is being ditched in a bathtub haphazardly with one leg in and one leg out and he’s a werewolf.

Jensen (is also a werewolf) fumbles (with his werewolf hands) the knobs of the faucet and before Jared can even scream he’s being pummeled in the chest with a jet of frigid water that soaks him straight through, red shirt and light jeans darkening up instantly.

Some of it gets up his nose when he inhales sharply, system plummeting straight from ‘panic’ into blatant shock and Jared gasps so hard he coughs violently, curling up in the bottom of the tub as icy water sluices around him, plastering his hair to his forehead and beating down against his back.

“Asshole!” Jared splutters on a raspy gasp, wiping aggressively at his face. He’s breathing is still ragged and rattling deep in his chest but it’s starting to even out as anxiety is replaced with rage.

“What?” Jensen demands harshly. His neck is red and splotchy from the collar of his shirt up and he’s breathing almost as unsteadily as Jared is.

Jared grabs the closest thing he can –a mostly empty bottle of Garnier Fructis Haircare Triple Nutrition Fortifying Hair Shampoo- and hurls it straight at Jensen’s chest where it bounces off unsatisfactorily with a small squirt of rose scented gel. “Someone’s having a panic attack and your first fucking instinct is to throw them in the shower and turn on the cold water?” Jared shouts, groping around the edge of the bathtub for something else to pelt at Jensen as he gets wet hair and cold water in his eyes.

“I’ve never done this before!” Jensen defends, matching Jared in volume. “How was I supposed to know?”

“It’s common _fucking_ sense!” Jared screams emphatically, face hot.

“Shit,” Jensen mutters and scrubs his shaking hands roughly through his hair, fingernails scoring against his scalp before he locks his hands behind his neck and stares at Jared through the showerhead mist. “Sorry. Sorry, I’m bad at this.”

“No shit,” Jared grunts, reaching a hand out for assistance.

Jensen’s up and grasping his hand quickly, eager to be useful and Jared _hauls._

Jensen’s weight crushes all the air out of his lungs and squashes him painfully into the unyielding porcelain, but it’s worth it for the shocked shout Jensen chokes on when the cold water hits him.

-

“It does get easier, you know,” Jensen tells him later when they’re toweling off.

Jared will believe him when he can say it while keeping eye contact.

-

Jensen feels like they should be doing something.

Huge changes should require huge actions but really they’re just sitting in his bedroom being lethargic, Jared wrapped up in the two blankets from the back of his car Jensen brought in earlier so tight that Jensen can’t even see his head, just a little tuft of hair that pokes out through the make-shift hood. He’s tucked into the corner of the bed, one shoulder pressed into the window with his back braced against the wall, curled up as small as a boy as tall as him can get. His hands emerge from the part in the draping, long fingers dancing across the faded keys of his laptop and Jensen wonders what he’s writing about while attempting to look very busy not wondering what Jared’s typing about.

Maybe he’s sending out an email.

‘Help! I’ve been abducted by werewolves! The stupid one I’m stuck with threw me in the shower!’

Jensen swallows compulsively, fingers skittering along the edge of the book he doesn’t even know the title of. He resists the urge to rip the computer out of Jared’s hands and make sure he’s not putting them in danger because he doesn’t think it would go over well.

Jensen’s in the opposite corner of the room from Jared, tucked into the cranny behind the door that had only existed in theory to him until he remembered he could close the door, hardwood steadily numbing his ass. His shoulders are starting to cramp up from being wedged so hard into the corner but he does actually feel better being so close to the door. Close to the door and as far away from Jared as possible while still keeping him in sight, it feels like the safest place to be.

“Hey, Jensen?” Jared calls, voice a little weathered.

Jensen hums a questioning sound and most definitely does not tense up.

“Where are you guys from?”

“What?” Jensen looks up sharply but Jared is squinting at his computer screen.

“I mean, shot in the dark here, you guys aren’t from Asia.” Jared down keys. “So, what? Europe? Scandinavia? Jensen sounds Scandinavian.”

“What?” Jensen says again, more emphatically as he shakes his head and hauls himself upright.

“I mean originally,” Jared clarifies, peeking out from his personal blanket fort.

“Are you…” Jensen circles the room, edging towards the bed. “Looking up werewolves?”

Jared angles the screen toward him and, yes, he’s looking up werewolves. He has eleven tabs open, all of them some different version of ‘werewolf’ searched and Jensen closes his eyes and smiles softly as he scrubs over his eyebrow.

“Do I have to eat hearts now?” Jared asks, mostly joking but Jensen can see a small haunt in his eye. “Because I think I’m going to be okay with the whole growing hair thing if I don’t have to eat virgin heart.”

Jensen exhales a soft snort of a laugh. “No. Virgin hearts are terrible anyway.”

It’s the first time he tells a joke and Jared laughs. Softly, more of a rasp, but it’s there.

Jensen shifts on his feet uncomfortably before taking the initiative for only the second time in the brief history of their tentative friendship to close the distance between them, kneeing up onto the bed cautiously. Jared doesn’t cower away and, aside from opening up his chest slightly and leaning back against the window to make room, doesn’t make any indication that Jensen’s presence is unwelcome so Jensen settles next to him, close enough that they can both see the screen at the same time but not so close that they touch.

“What else?” Jensen asks, skimming over the article about lycanthropy with the engraving of the grotesque wolf man clutching at a bodice clad young lady as she screams in terror in the upper right hand corner.

“Does wolfsbane really do anything?” Jared pulls his knees into his chest and props up his chin.

Jensen shrugs. “Just don’t eat it, you’ll get really sick.”

“And what about silver?”

Jensen winces. “We… we have a book around here somewhere. From before. Peter started writing things down, if you’re really curious.”

Jared hums and switches the angle his chin digs into his kneecap from the point to the flat of his jaw, hair sloping over his forehead. “Who’s Peter?”

“He’s dead,” Jensen clips. The wolf man in the portrait snarls right at him. “I’ll be right back. Don’t open the door for anyone.”

Jensen knows where the book is just like he knows that no one’s touched it in two years, and while he’d like to think that’s out of respect for Peter’s death he knows that it’s just because no one cared enough to keep it updated. Really, it’s not even a book in the strictest sense, more of a binder. Jensen actually thinks that it was supposed to be a cook book before Peter stole it, which would explain the faded out peaches on the front.

The thin linoleum of the cover crackles when Jensen starts to gently ease it off the shelf in the living room. The outer shell of the binder is cracked and blackened with char. The first few pages were lost completely and the remaining ones have curling corners and still smell distinctly like burnt. Jensen tries not to breathe too deeply as he leads himself back upstairs and lets himself in.

Jared glances up at him, still tapping away at the computer. Jensen crawls up next to him, sheets rucking up under his knees and he dares to sit half an inch closer as he passes over the book.

Jared takes it from him gingerly, taking point from Jensen’s delicacy with the binder as he settles it into his lap and starts to leaf through the pages.

“Cool,” Jared says lightly under his breath as he gently turns over short passages about the accelerated healing of the wolf people compared to the half forms and how it affects breaks, burns, and cuts. There’s some mundane stuff Jensen assumes are the basics of setting bones and sewing together flesh before pages and pages of poisonous plants, how to treat the symptoms and apply the antidotes when appropriate. Pressed flowers with fraying petals resist smoke sullied scotch tape, pulling away from the yellowed pages as Jared sifts through the book. Charcoal illustrations and newspaper clippings are tacked to some pages, worn soft and tattered with age and abuse.

Jared pauses to touch over a few of the flowers, fingers tracing the dried stems and shriveled leaves absently as he reads over each entry with dedication.

There’s only a brief entry on changing humans. That it’s possible, but only during the full moon and only if Moon decides to let them live first. Jared lingers on that page and Jensen watches him closely for any indication that he’s going to snap again, but he just hums another interested sound in his throat before turning towards the next entry.

Silver poisoning.

A small avalanche of free floating Polaroids come slipping out from between the pages and puddle in Jared’s lap. Jared picks them out of the folds of his blankets carefully and Jensen cranes his head to see if he can catch a glimpse. He doesn’t remember there ever being new photographs.

The photos run in a series and Jensen doesn’t recognize them for the first few moment of staring. Some skinny, naked boy limp and face down in the back of a flatbed truck, maybe passed out. The pictures are taken from high up, like someone was standing on the edge of the tailgate, looming tall above the kid while snapping off a set of photos.

He’s filthy. His hair is matted brown with dried mud and blood, the same brown that streaks down his body, splotchy with the sweat that’s been cutting clean trails through the dirt. His wrist is swaddled in grimy wrappings and his knee is held straight with a crude brace of duct tape and what looks like the stem of a broom snapped from the brush and then broken in half to splint both sides of the bloated, purple appendage. The real _pièce de résistance_ of the image is the center focus: the kid’s back. The gauze is peeled back from the wound, curled away like a wilting orchid and just as yellow. Blackened like death, deadened flesh is carved open and wet, seeping dark blood that pools in the dip of his lower back and streaks down his side, probably reopened when they peeled away his bandage. The scab stretches outside the limits of the wound itself, blistering the flesh grotesquely across his pale skin by following the paths of veins and it looks like he’s been burned and stabbed and poisoned all in one, all at once.

“Jesus Christ,” Jared mutters and turns the picture to the side for a better look at the wound.

Jensen’s body is numb until his fingertips come into contact with the corner edge of the thick film, so sharp the photoprint feels like it could cut. Jared’s fingers give easily when he tugs.

“Jensen?” The voice filters in through Jensen’s one ear but doesn’t hit anything on the way out of the other.

He flips through the pictures, feels the camera move closer to the gaping black hell of his back.

“I didn’t know they took pictures,” he mumbles dumbly, voice sounding strange in his own ears. It’s dark in the photos, near dusk probably if they felt comfortable enough to stop long enough to pull the tarp off of him and snap some pictures for science.

His hands go lax and the photos flutter down to the sheet.

“Wait.” Jared leans forward into Jensen’s space disruptively. “That’s you?” His voice climbs up even higher, going tighter and cracking straight down the middle. He snatches the pictures up off the bed, and then again, more forcefully: “ _Jesus Christ!”_

Jensen thinks he should be feeling something right now, but there’s nothing. A sharp reminder in a nerve-dead scar.

“When was this?” Jared demands, sorting through the pictures rapidly and going paler with each second. “Jesus Christ.”

There was a girl in town when Jensen was twelve who tried to explain Jesus Christ to him. She was the daughter of the preacher or the pastor or the priest, whatever the hell, and thought she was hot shit for it. Jensen would always beg to be let along on the trips into town to pick up feed or clothes. He’d sit by the car and watch the people, the real type people-people, move on through their days even if they sometimes cast strange glances in the way of the quiet little boy in the clothes that were too big for his frame. He’d wait out whatever job they were supposed to be on and then his father would come out and ruffle his hair and take him for ice cream. She worked behind the counter of the gas station and looked down her nose at Jensen’s parents. When he came up with a fistful of sweaty dollars and an ice cream sandwich she asked him if he’d found Jesus.

Jensen hadn’t known Jesus was lost.

She’d given him the ice cream for free and sat him down, told him that Jesus was love and forgiveness and the only way that bad little boys would find their way to salvation.

He told her he didn’t need anyone to lead him, he’d find the way himself.

She told him he was going to hell.

In a way she was right. It just came a lot sooner than either of them thought it would.

“Jensen!” Jared’s shaking his shoulder. “Jensen, what happened?”

“Hunters,” Jensen scrapes out.

“Hunters?” Jared repeats and his voice gets even tighter if at all possible.

There are fingernails biting into his shoulder and this is Jared’s life now too, so Jensen elaborates in monotone: “Two years ago. They came through the forest, downwind so we didn’t catch their scent, in the middle of the day. Waited for Alpha to leave, but there’s no way they could have known –probably just dumb luck for them.” He tries to shrug the hand off his shoulder but Jared persists. “Our ancestors used to hunt people like game, but we’ve never… not ever.”

They did nothing to provoke the attack. Nothing but existing.

“Hey, look at me, calm down.” There’s a hand on Jensen’s face, fingers curling into the corner of his jaw and angling his face away from the frozen image of some instance in the worst week of this dumb kid’s short, pathetic existence, and Jensen finds the statement odd.

He is calm. He’s the poster child for calm. Any extreme emotions have been scooped up out of him and laid aside so that he’s an empty cardboard box of a soul. When he breathes in the air doesn’t go to his lungs because he threw them away to keep the weight off his chest, so the cold just fills up every inch of him.

“Jensen,” Jared says and Jensen hadn’t realized his eyes had lost focus until he has to blink to make out the shapes of Jared’s face so close to his, expression equal parts concern and absolute fear. “Don’t you do this to me, not right now! We can’t both be freaking out, come on.” He blinks big, wet eyes, pleading.

“Sorry.” Jensen shakes his head out and gets some feeling back into his hands. The world starts turning again and Jared’s hands are on his face, fingers splayed out over his cheeks warm and pressured. “Wow, holy shit, sorry.” He shakes his head again and those fingers fall away.

Jensen blushes and runs his fingers through his hair, pointedly not looking at the other boy on the bed. “Sometimes I just…” His fingers twitch next to his temple in illustration because he doesn’t have words to describe the way his brain glitches and goes offline sometimes. He chews on his lower lip and glances across the room towards the blank wall.

“Yeah,” Jared laughs shakily and leans back into his blanket nest, giving Jensen space. “I’ve noticed.”

“Sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry.”

“Sorry.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Jensen doesn’t.

“That’s… really invasive,” Jared comments uncomfortably, fingering at the edge of one of the photos taken from an angle and Jensen’s not sure if he means the gross gaping wound in his back or his bare ass.

Jensen shrugs and Jared flips the picture over face down so there’s nothing but a black square framed in white where Jensen used to be.

“I still have the scar,” Jensen adds, asinine.

Jared looks up at him and Jensen can see the war waging over his face between curiosity and distress, and he knows that Jared wants to ask, but he doesn’t force him to actually give the urge voice. He leans forward over his own knees and knuckles his shirt at the collar, pulling it over his head so Jared can get a clear look the before and the after.

“Jesus…”

Maybe Jensen should have looked harder for Jesus.

He knows the scar is ugly; perhaps the ugliest thing to come out of the fire. It looks like a raised diamond surrounded by boiled pudding skin and he avoids looking at and thinking about it whenever possible. Most of the nerves in that part of his back are frazzled and unresponsive, but some of them are hypersensitive.

Jared touches the hypersensitive ones.

“Jensen…” Finger pads brush over the skin gently, like it might still hurt if he presses any harder than a whisper. Jensen wishes briefly that he could see what Jared’s face looks like but he doesn’t turn his head to actually take a peek. Jared’s hands are warm and his touch is solid, tracing the outer edges of the scar and skirting up Jensen’s side where he has to twitch away when the feather light touch tickles. The touches are soft, strangely reverent and Jensen shudders.

He curves away from the touch and the moment, ducking back into his shirt.

“So if you’ve got any silver jewelry now’s the time to toss it out,” Jensen grunts over his shoulder as he rolls off the bed.

-

The house is great. It’s warm, it’s dry, it has running water, it’s bigger than the back seat of the old Mav, no one’s punching him in the kidney around every corner; it’s everything Jared could have possibly asked for. Sure, the bathroom’s a little cluttered but the water pressure puts the community center to shame.

The next three days play out in the same pattern.

Jared wakes up with Jensen sitting around the room somewhere with his head angled back and his eyes closed, but he won’t be sleeping. Jared will get up and get dressed while Jensen lounges, stretched out across the floor or balancing on the back legs of the chair with his feet propped up on the desk, and keeps his eyes closed. By the time Jared pulls a sweatshirt –his own or Jensen’s, he’s stopped caring about the distinction in anything except his underwear, just so long as it’s warm and Jensen’s clothes do tend to be warmer than his carry overs from Texas- Jensen’s up and about, leading him wordlessly downstairs into the invasive smells and deafening sounds of the world.

Most everyone is cleared out by that point, though Jared thinks he saw Mike scuttling out one morning.

Sam sits them down at the island and asks Jared what he wants to eat and Jared never knows.

“You look like you could use some food, come on,” she’ll say on a smile and Jared will flounder even further because his mother used to say things like that to him. He’ll stall until she decides for him that he wants waffles or bacon and eggs or grits.

Jensen fetches them coffee and practically bathes himself in the steam while Jared and Sam chat idly as she works, him asking questions about what she’s doing because he figures that at some point in his life it’s going to be handy to know how to make waffle batter from scratch, and she prying slightly at his life and how Jensen’s treating him. She never asks Jensen what he wants to eat and, as far as Jared can tell, Jensen never really wants to eat. He’ll nibble a bit at whatever she puts in front of him but he never seems to elect to eat voluntarily. When lunch time comes swinging around Jared is the one who has to bring it up, distracting Jensen out of whatever lists he’s writing over in the corner, buried nose deep in candles as he crouches over the desk and the food process begins all over again, only this time with sandwiches, which he uses as an excuse to bat Sam out of his way and make his own.

Then it’s back to Jensen’s room, Jensen back to his scribbling, and Jared back to dicking around on the unprotected network he is just assuming belongs to the house because it’s named “Misha. No.” thinking inane little thoughts while he does inane little tasks like ‘wow I haven’t checked the weather since I was human,’ or, ‘golly, the last time I watched a stupid video about cats I wasn’t arguably being held hostage.’ Jared plays _Dolphin Olympics 2_ until his high scores are internationally ranked.

Jared gets restless quickly, muttering under his breath that he wants to go back to school and get back to his life but Jensen tells him shortly that he’s not going anywhere until he can stand in the middle of the kitchen during the lunch rush and not get a splitting headache. Those are the only times that they speak. Jared, because he doesn’t really know what to say to Jensen or really if he wants to say anything to Jensen at all. Jensen, because if people could get high scores in not talking Jensen would be internationally ranked, too.

The sun sets and Jensen crawls out the window, leaving Jared alone, alone, alone and when Jared tries to stay up waiting for him he falls asleep waiting and has nightmares where he’s being dissected on operating tables and branded with acid and stabbed in the back with a silver knife and he’ll thrash and scream and sob but when wakes up Jensen is there, at the foot of the bed with this skull rocked back onto the mattress and his ankles crossed out in front of him and then the cycle repeats.

Which makes it odd that on the sixth day the easy routine is disrupted by Jensen shaking him awake.

“Wh-?” Jared mumbles unintelligibly, batting ineffectively at the hand jostling his shoulder.

“Come on, get up,” Jensen chides. “You’re gonna hang out with Alona while I go down to the school to fix our schedules.”

“What?” Jared asks again, more coherently as he wrings out his eyes with the heels of his hands. He’s awake enough to register that Jensen’s playing hot potato with him and feels a pang of irritation that he has to be handed off to someone else for surveillance, even if it’s supposedly for his own good or whatever. He isn’t a child, he isn’t some toy dog, and he could have probably just slept straight through Jensen’s schedule.

“And I’m gonna pick up your assignments,” Jensen continues, undeterred by Jared’s bleariness. “Is there anything you need me to turn in for you while I’m there?”

“I-,” Jared squints hard through the hair falling in front of his face. “Yeah? My backpack’s in the passenger’s seat of my car. I have some stuff.”

“I’ll figure it out,” Jensen cuts him off and glances out the window as his foot bounces, obviously in some sort of hurry. “Come on, get up.” It’s the most he’s said while looking directly at Jared in almost a week.

Jared blunders out of bed and follows Jensen downstairs, yawning and rubbing some feeling back into his face with the rough fabric of the sweatshirt sleeve grating into his cheeks where it’s overlapped his palms and Jared doesn’t think he’s ever owned a rowing sweater.

They take the back way through the living room into the kitchen and Jared wakes up fully somewhere along the way, coming around as he stares at the black thermal stretched across Jensen’s shoulders. He’s deposited at the island counter just like every morning only with the distinct difference of company.

Alona’s sitting on top of the counter next to the fridge, pale feet swinging against the cabinets. Her legs aren’t bare today but instead swimming through black sweatpants that are six sizes too big for her frame, kept up only by a draw string tied in triple knots. She’s wearing a white tank top, her face is clean, and her hair is messy.

“Did you steal those out of my closet?” Jensen plucks at the sweatpants on his way to the coffee thermos.

“Yup.” Alona grins. “I think this is the longest I’ve ever gone without seeing your ugly mug in my life; I needed something to remember you by.”

Jensen snorts and rolls his eyes into the rim of his coffee mug and Jared watches them, feeling detached from the situation like he’s watching a television show instead of real life.

“I’m gonna be late,” Jensen spares as he glances at the actual clock above the oven on the other side of the kitchen and Jared has the wheel around to catch a look, too. 10:43. He hasn’t slept in so late since he came here.

Jensen’s second pass through the kitchen is significantly less successful, namely because Alona reaches out and snags his chin just as he hurries by, wheeling him around so they’re eye-to-eye, even as Jensen whines. “’Lona! I’m gonna be late!”

“Late for what?” Jared rubs at his eyes.

“He’s got a meeting with his counselor,” Alona explains even as levels Jensen with a speculative look, delicate features hardening as she twists his face to the side. “Did you eat anything yesterday?”

“I mean, sort of, I ate-”

“No,” Jared chimes in idly, dedicating himself to becoming an active audience member, and Jensen shoots him a withering look. It’s the first time Jensen’s really looked directly at him in a solid week and Jared grins vapidly.

“Thank you,” Alona chirps brightly before turning pointedly to Jensen. She’s poised to say something pithy if the curve of her mouth is anything to go by, but then seems to notice something else hidden in Jensen’s face, and her brow creases. “Have you been sleeping?”

“Yeah,” Jensen intones and twists out of her grip. “Come on, I really do have to go.”

Alona looks to Jared for confirmation and Jared, as much as he would delight into getting Jensen into a little bit more trouble for his own good, has to sit back in his seat and blink because he doesn’t know. He honestly has no clue if Jensen has even slept a wink since he came here.

He cuts his eyes to Jensen, really taking him in for the first time in a few days –since the scar thing- and he realizes that Jensen looks drawn, like his skin has been pulled a little too tight over his features so it’s begun to white out, sinking deep into the hollows of his cheeks where the stubble has begun to cultivate. The shadows under his eyes have shadows.

Jared feels suddenly and crushingly guilty for hogging Jensen’s bed.

Jensen ducks into the hallway and Alona’s off the counter and across the kitchen in a flurry of tiny limbs and excess cloth faster than Jared can readily comprehend.

“Wait!” she shouts, sprinting to the terracotta fruit bowl sitting primly in the center of the kitchen table and nearly tipping it over in her haste to snatch up an apple. “At least take some fruit with you to eat on your way, dickhead!” She pitches the apple down the hall –really pegs it- and Jared hears it connect with something meaty.

“Ow! Shit!”

“Eat it!” She braces herself into the yell, fists held tight by her sides as she really leans into it and the door slams shut.

Jared is amused. At least, he’s pretty sure he’s amused. He’s never really seen an interaction truly akin to that before in his life, so he has no basis to really compare his emotions to so he can decipher the mix of fondness and fear burbling in his chest.

The tension eases slowly out of Alona’s body and she reminds Jared of a marionette with the strings sliced when her shoulders slump and her fingers straighten back out. She motors out an exhale and cards her fingers through thick blonde hair, scrambling the sloppy bun clinging haphazardly to the back of her head as she goes.

“Is it always like this?” Jared ventures hesitantly.

“What?” Alona blinks at him, as if she’d forgotten momentarily that he was there. “What do you mean? With Jensen?”

Jared nods and she shrugs.

“I mean,” she starts softly and ambles over to the seat next to Jared’s, bracing her forearms against the back, “Not always. Usually I can’t get away with teasing. Only on the good days.”

“Today’s a good day?” Jared scoffs and rolls his eyes. He’s seen Jensen’s bad days, he guesses. But really, Jensen looking like he just crawled out of a grave is a good day?

Alona stares at him steadily. “Today’s the best day he’s had in a while,” she says flatly and then, after a moment, perkily: “Coffee?”

Jared reels momentarily, but recovers gracefully. “I can get it myself,” he assures on a half-smile and proceeds to do just that. The coffee smells like a world war and fills Jared’s head with cluttered senses because it’s so much, nearly too much and he has to rub out his sinuses every couple of seconds while he waits for his body to acclimate. He adds his sugar and he adds his cream and he doesn’t speak.

The moment of silence elapses where Jared can feel the opportunity for him to continue asking questions and have the conversation continue to flow naturally fading, a window of opportunity closing as every hesitated second brings him closer to sounding like he prying invasively whenever he finally comes around to asking, so he bites the bullet and blurts out: “How can you tell?” because he’s curious. He wants to know.

Maybe in the future it will help him out knowing Jensen’s tells on the subtle shifts in his moods; maybe it’s some leftover curiosity from when Jensen was the strange, sad boy who never spoke next to him in school; maybe Jared’s just allowed to be curious about the guy he’s been confined to close quarters with.

“That today was a good day?” Alona clarifies. Jared nods again, a little short and a little hesitant because he’s waiting to be reprimanded for his interests but she smiles, the apples of her cheeks rounding out sweetly. “He called me ‘Lona.”

A smile tugs across Jared’s lips and he smothers it in the rim of a chipped mug the inner meat of his lip catching on dry, raw ceramic where the glaze is flaked away. His lips stick when he pulls away, clears his throat, and asks, “Why?”

“Well, I mean my name is _A-_ lona, so I guess when you drop the-“

“No,” Jared laughs softly, cutting her off and she shoots him a wrinkled nose and a smug little grin. “I mean… why is he… like…” Jared waves his hand out in the air in front of himself, hunting for some word that is simultaneously accurate and inoffensive, but thinking of nothing.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Alona chuckles, but it’s a little dryer around the edges before. Her smile isn’t as pronounced. “I know what you mean.”

She motions for the stool Jared had been sitting at earlier, settling herself as she beckons with a floppy hand and Jared brings his coffee with him when he hesitantly picks his way to her side.

The only thing that Jared really knows about Alona is that she’s the only person that touches Jensen. Whether that’s because she’s the only person that Jensen allows it from or if she’s the only person who’s actually willing to battle the gauzy film of inaccessibility that clouds Jensen, Jared isn’t sure.

Either way he hopes Megan grows up to be something like her. Strong, nurturing, understanding.

Alona scrubs her hand over her forehead while Jared gets himself settled, picking at the chipped edges of his coffee cup and feeling the warmth seep into his thin fingers.

“I don’t know how much to tell you,” she admits into her palms. “Jensen’s not the most open guy in the world.”

“He…” Jared starts, licks his lips and they taste sweet and sticky like his coffee. He hesitates, thinks he shouldn’t ask, shouldn’t tell, but it’s been eating at him and he needs to know more than he wants to keep Jensen’s secrets. “He showed me… on his back.”

Alona’s head rolls on her neck when she looks at him, eyebrows climbing her forehead with genuine surprise. “Yeah? What’d he say?”

“Just that there were hunters,” Jared says, before adding sheepishly while picking at the edge of the sleet granite counter, “I’m not actually sure what that means.”

There is a sense of endless patience in Alona’s smiles, even the softest ones, even when her head is titled to the side and she’s laughing at his expense a little. “They’re just what they sound like. Hunters. Usually big guys with big guns who think it’s their job to purge the demons from the world.” She scoffs.

Jared asks, “Are you the demons of the world?” when he really should be asking ‘are we.’ He picks harder, his finger nail fraying as he worries at the seam between slabs of sleek stone.

She snorts under her breath and rolls her eyes significantly right at him. “I don’t feel like a demon.”

She tugs the elastic band out of her hair and the sloppy bun comes unraveled, yellow hair tumbling out all over and she gathers it back up as she continues, arms working mechanically in practiced motion as she puts it back up and splits her attentions between Jared and herself. “I mean, usually they go more for the lone wolf types: the rogue renegades out for blood or whatever. They can’t really track wolves unless they’re leaving trails, so it’s really only the ones who are hurting people that get caught in the crosshairs, so to speak.”

Her hair’s piled up high on top of her head and she gets her hands back to the counter before they’re back on her head, yanking the tie out a second time as she huffs in exasperation. Alona isn’t so much wriggling as she is vibrating. Her small, pale foot is tapping against the tile floor restless from the folds of Jensen’s sweatpants, knee joggling so hard the stool wiggles and Jared thinks she just needs something to do with her hands while she’s talking.

“We never did anything,” she says, staring at her strained reflection in the front of the stainless steel refrigerator blankly. “They came to our home, burned it down to the ground. Killed our chickens and our pigs. Fourteen people.”

“Jesus Christ,” Jared exhales and wonders if he regrets asking.

Alona nods mildly, still looking blankly ahead before she blinks herself back into the moment. “Anyway,” she shakes herself, “Jensen… God, Jensen was fantastic. He saved four people from a burning building and then crawled into the forest on a broken leg and saved my life, he – you can’t imagine, it was so awful- but he had to kill a man to save me and he didn’t even hesitate for a second.” She cuts a glance to Jared. “Didn’t hesitate then and he didn’t hesitate in calling everyone together. He stepped up while his father wasn’t there, did the job that Alpha _should_ have been doing.” Bitterness twinges in her voice and spasms across her face because she’s back to focusing on Jared, leaning more and more into his space like she’s imploring him to see something and Jared is unconsciously leaning away.

“He saved us,” Alona swears and Jared believes her so much that he can’t breathe, is afraid to move on the risk that he’ll break the raw truth of her expression or reveal the terror in his own.

She sighs and eases back, fingers coming through her loose locks. “I don’t know what did it. Maybe killing that guy, the blood or the fire or his mom dying or what, I don’t know. He just… shut down. Everything just shut down. He used to have this spark,” she whispers like a secret. “He was lit up from the inside. He used to be so happy. We all- we all took the hit, but Jensen, he took the blame.”

She licks her lips and stares off, eyes losing focus as she picks at her own fingernails.

Jared doesn’t know what to say.

He’s sorry, he’s so sorry for everything that happened to her and to them and to Jensen and he wants to say something but all that comes out of his mouth is a big fat nothing because sorrys don’t mean shit for something this heavy.

He feels like he should offer up something in return – _my parents didn’t actually die in a car crash, the last four months of my life have been hell, I want you to know, I want you to understand that I understand, I don’t want you to be alone-_ but it wasn’t really Alona’s story and he doesn’t really want to share.

“He’ll come back,” Alona comments offhandedly. “And he’ll be amazing. You’ll see.”

Jared tries to imagine Jensen the way Alona describes –unflinching, stoic- and it’s not so hard to fathom, not really.

Happy, though. That’s a tougher pill to swallow.


	9. Chapter 9

  
Nora Clemente had wanted to be a psychologist when she was a little girl, but somewhere along the way ‘psychologist’ turned into ‘counselor’ turned into ‘school guidance counselor’ and she’s mostly okay with the transition. Little towns and lack of resources tend to do that to dreams, but she enjoys helping out children and getting the future of America set on the tracks for their goals.

Sure, most of the kids here aren’t ever going to leave Vermont, probably move a mile off from their parents’ house so they can have little children that are carbon copies of themselves and bring them back for Sunday brunch so their grandparents can dote, like her, but some of them are going places.

Jensen Ackles has been more than a blip but less than a speck on her radar for the entirety of the two years he’s been under her roster, and even that’s mostly because the yearbook committee nominated him ‘Most Likely to Bring A Gun to School’ before administration stepped in and informed them that the category was incredibly inappropriate, however accurate the nomination was.

Nora had tried to solicit conversations with Jensen before of her own volition and upon the request of Mrs. Lewicki, who expressed concern for Jensen’s state of mind and Nora’s sure that if Jensen ever actually made it so far as to step foot inside of her damn office that they could actually get somewhere.

But, Jensen’s not really a problem child. He’s quiet, only has a few close friends as far as Nora can tell and she thinks he even might be dating that Tal girl, his grades are mediocre, and he minds his own business. Nora has three hundred other children to mind to and so long as Jensen continues to avoid her and stays out of trouble there’s not much she can do.

She’s seen his type before. He’s coasting, going nowhere by doing nothing and he’s going to wake up one morning in sixty years and wonder how he was eighteen yesterday and where the time went. That makes Nora sad, absolutely, but she can’t change him unless he wants to actually take part in the change.

So when he calls to set up an appointment with her after being absent for a week solid she isn’t sure whether she’s nervous or excited.

Shit, what if he killed somebody and now he wants her to help him hide from the cops?

Nora tucks her hair behind her ear, smoothes out her slacks over her thighs, pulls her cardigan in tighter, glances at the clock and waits until there’s a small little knock at her door.

“Come in,” she calls out coolly.

He’s quite good looking, Nora notices offhandedly when Jensen lets himself in. It’s just such a shame that those good looks are wasted on someone who isn’t going anywhere. He doesn’t make sound when he strides across the room and helps himself to a seat which Nora thinks is a little strange, like most things about him, but not strange enough to warrant actual concern or commentary.

“’Morning,” Jensen mutters and he seems generally unenthused to be in Nora’s office or alive at all.

Nora waits for him to elaborate, smiling pleasantly as he stares.

“This is my new class schedule,” he says simply, holding out his hand, complete with one slip of paper, resolutely in her direction as he stares her down with blank eyes.

“Oh.” Nora’s brows rise high at his bluntness. “Oh, okay.” She takes the paper partly out of reflex and partly out of shock. Though she isn’t exactly sure what’s shocking her most in the moment, his bluntness or the fact that it’s him who’s being blunt. “You want to change classes.”

Jensen nods once, a jerk of his chin, and glances at the clock. His good looks are hard in the harsh sunlight slanting in through her window, eyes blacked out by the shadow in his brow.

“Oh,” she says again blandly but then recovers when his attention swings back to her. “Right, sorry. I’m sorry to say that it’s too late in the year for me to change your schedule, but maybe if you wanted to discuss options in-“

“You’re not understanding,” Jensen cuts her off, not shortly, but he isn’t exactly delicate. There’s a definite note of _command_ in his voice and posture that’s in direct contradiction with everything anyone has ever told her or observed about Jensen Ackles and Nora doesn’t think she’s ever been more surprised by another student in her career.

“Those are the classes I’m going to for the rest of the year,” Jensen continues, speaking slowly and leaning into the words carefully. “You can change my schedule or not, I don’t really care, but I’m telling you how it’s gonna be. I’d prefer not to fail high school through sheer negligence but, to be frank, I don’t give a shit about this place or my education. It would be _inconvenient_ to me if you didn’t change my schedule, but it’s not really going to get in my way.”

He shrugs at her and waits out a silent beat expectantly like a teacher waiting to see if there’s any questions in the room. Nora is too shocked and affronted for questions. Jensen nods once into the silence and apparently they’ve reached some sort of agreement Nora wasn’t clued in on because he stands up –tall, tall, high school kids are so tall anymore- and slings the backpack he dragged in with him over one shoulder on his way out the door.

Nora stares after him with her mouth open and her eyebrows crunched together, dumbfounded and offended that someone twelve years her junior would have the audacity to come into her office and tell her what’s what.

She’s still scoffing to herself when she accesses Ackles, Jensen R. on the database and starts rearranging.

-

Jensen drops Jared’s assignments off and makes his rounds to all of Jared’s classes to pick up missed work and explain to a series of concerned looking teachers that yes, Jared’s fine, no, it isn’t anything too serious, yes, he’ll probably be back in school on Monday if he’s feeling up to it and no one asks how he knows or why he’s the one picking up Jared’s things.

It’s probably for the best, Jensen’s sure, but it irritates him all the same that all these people in Jared’s life are concerned about him on the surface but not really willing to put in the leg work into making sure he’s really okay. Not that Jensen is any better, but someone should be.

He pointedly informs Jared’s teachers one after another that he’s going to be attending class with Jared from now on and most of them take it rather well, probably assuming that whatever ailment kept Jared out of school for a week solid requires someone to lend a hand in the future and Jensen supposed that’s not too far off the mark. When they ask he just says that Jared was very, very ill and might be out of class sporadically for the rest of the year.

They nod with sad eyes and take Jensen’s word for it because he has an incredibly shitty forgery of a doctor’s note tucked into his pocket signed by Dr. Feelgood because Sebastian may be a useful asshole but he’s still an asshole.

Jensen rolls his eyes and huffs out a puff into the midafternoon air, breath foggy in the cold. The rain is a mist that cuts straight through Jensen like ice and the clouds off in the horizon are thick and black like smoke and Jensen wonders while he walks back to the house if there’s snow coming soon. It smells like sleet and hail on the air but maybe when the dark hits.

He’d like a good snow to drown himself in. Maybe he could convince Jared to come out with him and they could run together. Maybe Jared will magically stop hating snow. Maybe Jared will magically stop hating Jensen.

Jensen scrubs a hand through the wet on his forehead and contemplates again how much god damn effort is it to care for someone.

Jared’s backpack has gouged a cute little divot into his shoulder by the time he’s stomping back up the stoop of the pack house and letting himself in with a shouted, “Home!” He shakes the wet out of his hair and the droplets scatter against the wall.

“In here!” Alona hollers from the den and Jensen hauls the strap of the backpack up higher on his shoulder and goes deeper into the house.

Jared and Alona aren’t ‘curled’ together, per say. Both of them are perched near the center of the couch, legs crossed and bare toes scrunched up tight. Between them is a scattering of half empty candy bags and stray kernels of popcorn that are going to get crushed up and ground down deep between the cushions so that the sofa will stink of artificial butter and microwave for weeks. They’re leaning in at the shoulder, not touching, not really, but they’re sharing space comfortably.

“What’s up?” Jensen preludes as he leans in the doorway and tries to quell a little pang of yearning jealousy for their easy proximity and the grin on Jared’s face when he turns around.

“Hey!” Jared smiles. “How’d it go?”

Jensen has a moment where he’s not entirely sure that Jared is addressing him because Jared hasn’t spoken more than four words in his direction all week, why would he start now? But then again, there’s no one else in the room Jared could possibly be looking at or talking to, unless Jensen’s having some sort of out of body experience, so he replies with a hesitant little: “Good, good. Yeah. It went great. I got your stuff and talked to all of your teachers.”

“Yeah?” Jared’s brow rises up, interested and enthused.

Jensen scratches at the back of his neck under Jared’s continued attention, flustered by the strange stretch in patience Jared has suddenly decided to begin displaying again. “Uh, Yeah. You’re probably good to go for Monday, if you want.”

“Awesome!” He fist pumps once and turns back around to catch the movie and Jensen realizes for the first time that they’re watching _Some Like It Hot,_ the last thing Jensen left in the DVD player.

_“You can’t marry Osgood!”_

_“You don’t think he’s too old for me?”_

_“Jerry, you can’t be serious!”_

_“Why not? He keeps marrying girls all the time!”_

_“But you’re not a girl! You’re a guy! And why would a guy want to marry a guy?”_

_“For security!”_

“Jensen!” Alona clucks and Jensen startles in the doorway. “Quit hovering and get down here!” She waves towards the empty space next to her and Jensen appeals to the nonverbal request, putting down the backpack and wedging himself between the arm of the sofa and Alona. She doesn’t waste a second in slotting herself right into his side, tucking up her feet. He slings an arm over her shoulder and pulls in her warmth, meeting bare skin with the palm of his hand and the texture feels odd. Flesh. Contact. Huh.

He catches Jared looking their way out of the corner of his eye but by the time he looks over Jared’s back to watching the screen.

_“Jerry, listen to me! There are laws! Conventions! It’s just not being done!”_

_“Joe! This may be my last chance to marry a millionaire!”_

_“Jerry… Jerry, will you take my advice? Forget about the whole thing, will you? Just keep telling yourself you’re a boy. You’re a boy.”_

_“I’m a boy.”_

_“That’s the boy.”_

_“I’m a boy. I’m a boy. I wish I were dead. I’m a boy.”_

Jared laughs, reedy thin and a little uncomfortable. Jensen doesn’t think he would have noticed if he had actually been watching the screen.

Jensen tries to be subtle about watching Jared’s reaction throughout the entire movie and he wants to know if Jared’s seen it before. He doesn’t think so, if Jared’s shock when Joe walks right up to Sugar in the middle of a song, still dressed as Josephine, and kisses her is candid. Not just a peck, and not anything hot or heavy- it isn’t a dirty kiss. It’s intimate, familiar – sensual. Marilyn Monroe leans into it and doesn’t care that when she opens her eyes she’s looking at another woman, her best friend.

“Oh my god!” Jared bursts on a laugh and Alona giggles into Jensen’s arm and Jensen feels vindicated on some deep, secret level of himself that Jared’s enjoying the film. He smiles and winces in all the right places and Jensen watches carefully up until the end, his favorite part, to see if Jared _gets it_.

_“Osgood, I’m gonna level with ya’. We can’t get married at all!”_

_“Why not?”_

_“Well… In the first place I’m not a natural blonde!”_

_“Doesn’t matter.”_

_“I smoke! I smoke all the time!”_

_“I don’t care.”_

_“I’m a terrible pass! For three years now I’ve been living with a saxophone player!”_

_“I forgive you.”_

_“I can never have children!”_

_“We can adopt some.”_

_“You don’t understand, Osgood! Aw! I’m a man!”_

_“Well, nobody’s perfect.”_

Jared doesn’t laugh.

He cackles.

-

They watch television for a few hours and people drift in and out, casual until they realize that Jared’s there and then they get stiff and awkward. They only loiter for a few moments before finding some excuse to be somewhere else.

It shouldn’t hurt Jared’s feelings and for the most part it doesn’t.

But when one girl –the tall one with the long reddish hair, Danneel- walks in, sees him, and immediately turns heel, it stings a bit.

“Alona!” Jensen groans when Alona leaves it on _I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant._ “Come on!”

“You don’t even know if you don’t like it, you’ve never seen it!” Alona protests adamantly, keeping the remote out of Jensen’s reach when he makes to steal it, nearly toppling over into Jared in the process. “Jensen!”

“Alona!” he parrots back. “You’re crushing Jared! Give me the remote!”

“No!” she huffs and nearly crawls into Jared’s lap in a bid to escape Jensen’s grabbing.

Jared wheezes out a harsh exhale when she elbows his ribs and he feels like he should feel weird, having some girl he barely knows crawling all over him, but she feels just the way Megan used to feel when she and Jeff had these same arguments.

Jensen seems to draw some invisible line around Jared that he refuses to cross and, though he tugs at Alona’s ankle, the television stays on the terrifying pregnancy show.

Alona settles into his chest, snuggling like a puppy. After a few moments of startled hesitation Jared relaxes into the position, figuring if she’s comfortable enough with him to establish the contact he’s fine with accepting it and they slot together easily. She puts her feet in Jensen’s lap and Jensen rests his hand on her calf and they watch television idly.

The setup feels strangely domestic and it makes Jared’s chest ache. He used to spend Saturdays like this with Jeff and Megan all the time when they were kids. When the skies outside were grey and the rain pelted against the window.

His hand comes up to rest gently over the curve of Alona’s head, petting affectionately at smooth hair.

For a moment he closes his eyes and pretends.

He misses his sister. More than he can express with words. He hopes she doesn’t hate him. One day, when he’s big enough and can stand tall enough on his own two feet, he’s going to go back and find her. He’ll call her Meggy and hug her so hard that their ribs crack.

He wonders if they talk about him at home. If they called Jeff in Europe on his semester abroad and told him yet. Did they try to look for him? Did anyone else?

He misses his couch and his movies and his parents and his meal times and his old Saturdays.

Jared knows he shouldn’t feel sorry for himself. Indulging in moments like these with nostalgia and bitterness isn’t encouraging him to grow up. And besides, it’s not like his mother died and he’s never been stabbed and he’s never killed a man. Jared’s childhood ended in fistfights but it could have ended in fire. There are worse ways his life could have gone. Werewolves or no werewolves.

“Hey,” Jensen calls, voice a little hesitant and Jared glances over to realize Jensen’s been watching the progression of thought pass across Jared’s expression. Jensen holds up a half empty bag of M&Ms in offering.

Jared takes a handful of proffered candy and smiles.

They veg out, hopping from marathon to marathon until they finally settle on a string of those old Steven Segal action flicks with the outrageous effects and cheesy dialogue.

This Saturday’s pretty okay, he guesses.

Sam comes to ask them what they want for dinner around nine and Alona volunteers to make chicken with her. A few more people filter in and out of the kitchen and Jared gets a few dubious looks, inspiring him to eat quickly and retire early, Jensen close behind him the whole way. They say a short goodbye to Sam and Alona, Jared thanking them for the meal and the company while avoiding the stare of the Norman in the corner eating with his fingers.

“Sorry about him,” Jensen appeals when they’re back in his room. “They’ll get used to you, don’t worry about it.”

“Right,” Jared says. “Sure.”

“Right,” Jensen repeats and Jared really, really didn’t mean to make things uncomfortable. They’d been having such a good day so far.

“I’ll, uh…” Jensen scratches at the back of his neck and jabs his thumb at the black wetness outside of the window. “Let you get some sleep.”

He starts to step for the window and Jared jumps in with, “Wait!”

“You don’t…” he starts, but loses steam when Jensen actually looks at him. “You don’t have to go…if you don’t want to…” he offers awkwardly, tucking his bare toes into the arch of his other foot.

Jensen observes him seriously for a long beat, silence stretching around them and, shit, Jared shouldn’t have said anything.

“Look,” Jared begins in an attempt to be diplomatic but his voice is loud in his own ears and he can feel the ramble starting up on the back of his tongue before he can even start to stop himself. “It’s raining outside and I don’t want to, like, kick you out of your room or anything –no way, you were here first and I don’t want to be a bother or anything and if you’re losing sleep or something because you have to crash in the woods I’d way prefer if you stayed here. And I guess I have to start getting used to living with a roommate since it doesn’t look like our living arrangements are just going to up and change anytime soon. So if you wanted to crash here instead of…whatever it is that you do, I think that’d be better.”

Jensen’s expression pulls tight, like daring to hope physically pains him and Jared is simultaneously depressed and endeared.

“Yeah?” Jensen rasps.

“Yeah.” Jared smiles softly, casual like it’s no big deal.

Jensen chews on the inside of his lip and ducks his head when he steps out to grab some extra blankets.

He crashes on the floor on the other side of the room on a thin pallet of blankets that makes Jared’s bones ache just looking at it. Jared debates for a moment telling Jensen that they should switch because Jared is the one in _Jensen’s_ bed and Jensen shouldn’t have to sleep on the ground in his own bedroom, but at the same time Jared doesn’t want to sleep on the floor because Jensen’s miserable carpetless wonderland is probably dirty and hard and cold in the morning.

The offer is on the tip of his tongue for the long stretch of time it takes him to fall asleep staring at Jensen’s back across the darkness.

It’s a big bed. They could sleep back-to-back, maybe. It wouldn’t be weird. Alona and Katie and them do it all the time.

Jensen’s steady breathing lulls him to sleep before he can get himself to offer.

-

Jared’s cleaning. He’s cleaning. He’s really cleaning, he promises. Swears. Just, the floorboards keep growing thorns and it’s hurting his feet when he tries to walk and tearing up his hands when he tries to crawl. But, he’s cleaning, he swears he’s cleaning. Even when the floorboards open up, still so stubbornly dirty despite Jared’s scrubbing and he knows, knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that the floor opens up into Hell and that’s why he had to keep it clean in the first place.

It doesn’t make any sense, but it’s real.

He scrambles backwards as the beams fall away and reveal the open pit of blackness underneath that reaches up for Jared, wants him, wants him more than anyone else ever did.

Jared tries to run but his shoes are too small. Why are his shoes so small? He trips. He falls.

Falling sounds like thunder and Jared wakes up in a cold sweat, breathing so hard that the muscles of his stomach ache from heaving and he feels oppressed by his own immobility and thrashes violently, blindly. Rain pelts hard against the window, a crescendo inside of Jared’s eardrums smothering everything and he screams and screams and screams to be heard over the din.

“It’s okay, you’re okay!” The words crush down on Jared like a tidal wave, cutting through the clutter of the universe, right in his ear.

He sobs and realizes all at once that he isn’t being restrained by his own fear, he’s actually being physically held down by firm hands linked around his wrists and holding them crossed over his chest so that he doesn’t strike something with his flailing. The chest pressed snug into his back is warm like a furnace and it scalds Jared right through their two t-shirts.

“Sorry,” Jared rasps on a sore throat and trembles all over.  “Didn’t mean t—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jensen says quickly, voice low enough to go under the noise of the rain without really adding to it. “Really, okay?”

Jared nods into his own sweaty hair, turning into the pillow. When Jensen goes to pull away Jared holds his hands.

“Jared…”

“Please.”

Jensen settles in behind him, on top of the sheet but close chest pressed tight against Jared’s back so that they slot together like puzzle pieces. Jared’s trembling hits the solid wall of Jensen’s body and Jensen absorbs the shakes, sucks them in and holds Jared close. The rain turns to sleet and then hail, cracking against the window right next to Jared’s ear and he winces with each strike, pushing back.

“You’re okay,” Jensen rumbles softly, holding tighter when the thunder cracks and rolls across the sky like religion. The arm he’s twined underneath Jared to curl around his stomach must be losing feeling by now, circulation cut off by the pressure of Jared’s ribs baring down on his forearm so that his hand goes white static with pins and needles, but Jensen doesn’t let go.

“You know,” Jensen starts and his lips run up the side of Jared’s neck, voice low and soothing below the hail but he’s close enough that he can mumble and let the words rumble through his chest right into Jared’s. “I used to be terrified of thunderstorms.”

Jared nods frantically for him to continue even though it scrambles up his fried brain even further and winces hard against another bolt of lightning in the distance. He thinks he imagines the smell of ozone.

“Loud, terrible things. Smell awful.” There’s a hesitant little tremor through Jensen’s hand before he starts stroking his thumb soothingly down the inside of Jared’s wrist, grounding him in repetitive motion. “My… My mother used to have to hold me the entire time, sing to me to get me to calm down.”

The lightning is closer this time, striking the room instantaneously in electric blue light in shutters before the growl of the thunder ripping through the mountains booms afterwards and Jared sobs, reeling backwards harder until he and Jensen are practically plastered together from head to foot, lines of Jared smearing into Jensen and Jensen just hold tighter and hushes.

“I don’t know how to sing, Jared.”

“Hum it.”

Jensen hums like an earthquake, if an earthquake were in any way comforting. It’s generally tuneless as far as Jared can tell, more of a purr than anything and the thought makes Jared puff out a little laugh. He slips to sleep somewhere between lightning strikes with Jensen’s voice thrumming through him in washing tides.                                                                                                                                         

-

Sunday is just like the other days but easier.

When Jared crawls into bed he drags Jensen with him.


	10. Chapter 10

Main Street is a long, long stretch of absolutely nothing but green scenery and the vision of the lake off to the side. In fact, Jared’s sure that the only reason that it’s called Main Street is because it was here first and no other road wanted the job. The old railroad tracks run next to the greyed asphalt, but they’ve been out of commission for a while if the state of the beams is anything to go by. The sidewalk ran out when the neighborhood ended, so they’ve got to keep to the patchy stretch of gravel and grass that runs between the track and the road on the off chance that anyone else in the entire town is going to be out and about at five in the morning on a school day.

“Why couldn’t we just take my car?” Jared asks blearily, rubbing out his eyes. He’s used to getting up early, sure, but even if he hadn’t gotten used to sleeping in past eleven over the last week four o’ clock in the morning is pushing it.

“Ew,” Katie scoffs over her shoulder at him from where she’s blazing the trail ahead and Jared reels backwards into Jensen.

“Who actually wants to ride in cars?” Chris sidesteps them and rolls his eyes. “Don’t be dumb, new kid. The walk ‘ll do you good.”

“Don’t worry about them,” Jensen mutters with one hand curled under Jared’s elbow.

“Oh, he should worry about me!” Katie calls back warningly.

“Shut up,” Alona laughs.

“We can take your car tomorrow if you want.” Jensen kicks at the gravel, sending little rocks scattering and clattering about in a small cloud of dust.

Technically the high school is one town over from where the house is and the hike out is long enough that Jared’s feet start to ache and he’s biting back petulant whining by the skin of his teeth when he realizes he has blisters because they already think he’s a loser.

There is an oppressive sort of silence to the world this early on a morning this cold and even while Jared’s standing next to Jensen and hearing the gravel crunch under the boots of five others, he feels strangely alone.

Yeah, they’ll take his car tomorrow.

-

They get to class early enough that the halls are mostly empty and there’s no one in the English classroom to shoot them strange looks for coming in together except for Mr. Hawthorne, who only says, “Welcome back, we missed you,” nodding to each of them. “The back of my classroom was as empty as my heart.”

Jared smiles and Jensen rolls his eyes and they take their seats. They get a few surreptitious glances as the other kids file in and Jared smiles at them even though he doesn’t know them and they have shoes that make an astonishing amount of noise that echoes around inside of his head like a car crash in a canyon.

Christ, he missed school.

Four months ago that thought would have been the most ridiculous thing, but right now school feels like a warm bath of normalcy. He knows the rules here.

“You alright?” Jensen asks, leaning over the edge of Jared’s desk and right up into his space.

“Yeah.” Jared grins. “Don’t worry about it, man. It’ll be fi—”

The bell rings like a shrill gunshot right between Jared’s eyes. It rings and rings and rings, loud and forever. It reverberates with the resounding velocity of Jared’s absolute agony between his eardrums and there’s someone shouting and then, even more abruptly than it was there, it’s gone and there’s a room full of strangers staring at him.

“S-Sorry,” Jared stammers, sliding his hands down his face and away from where they were pressed over his ears.

“You okay?” Mr. Hawthorne asks glibly, but his face expresses genuine concern.

Jared glances from him to Jensen, who is in a similar state before he realizes how odd he must look, glancing to the boy sitting next to him in class looking for an answer about his own health.

“Yeah.” Jared shakes his head. “Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry. Headache.”

“Okay,” Hawthorne drawls slowly, pulling away from the query and moving towards the green of the chalk board. He angles a suspicious eye over to Jared’s corner every couple of minutes for the remainder of class and Jared slumps down lower into his seat each time.

When the bell rings again he grits his teeth into it and his ears ring the entire walk to Political Science.

The hallways stink like stale sweat and processed, synthetic fabrics worn warm and unwashed. Jared stumbles once on the stairs when a boy wearing an obscenely overwhelming amount of body spray stalks past, eyes blurring and sinuses burning and for a few moments the only thing keeping him upright is Jensen’s guiding hands on his back and under his wrist.

When Jared was in seventh grade he’d contracted mono. He wasn’t going to go out and say that it was Julie’s fault but they had played seven minutes in heaven at Sandy’s thirteenth birthday party and it took her another four months to start showing symptoms but she was the only girl Jared had ever kissed. The only person period at that point in his life. It felt like his skin was shrinking. His muscles ached, his body was wracked by chilled tremors and then turned back around and soared into delirious fever and he was too exhausted to even roll out of bed to shower the sick off. Like his life force was being sucked out of his chest like those chocolate Oreo cheesecake milkshakes Megan liked to get at Silver Diner, only instead of hovering out little chunks of chocolate cookie it was Jared’s will to live. He’d wanted to sleep. Sleep forever. Until his muscles stopped trembling and his bones stopped aching and his throat stopped burning. Until he was back in control of all his facilities.

This feels like that only worse.

“We can leave if you want,” Jensen mumbles right into his ear. He squeezes Jared’s wrist and Jared hones in on the sensation, the focus grounding him.

“No.” Jared shakes his head, sending his world spinning all over again. His hair swings in front of his eyes in clumps and he must have started sweating at some point, he hadn’t realized. “No, I got it, come on.”

He wanted to be here. He earned this school day. He needs to graduate.

Jared barely stumbles across the threshold of the Political Science classroom before he’s being body slammed.

“Jared!” Chad shouts right into Jared’s ear and he smells so overwhelmingly of pot and hair gel that Jared’s eyes water. All the same, it’s great to see him. Something normal.

Jared likes Chad, he’s glad he met him. He compliments Jared’s neurosis by not caring about anything at all. Chad Michael Murray’s had a pretty shitty life himself, if the rumor mill is to be believed, and Chad’s through with caring about people because he believes at the core of his being that people suck and will inevitably let him down sooner or later, so he’s going to beat them to the punch and let them down first. Jared doesn’t particularly agree with the philosophy, but he admires Chad’s passion in making damn sure that every person in the immediate area of him is aware of how much he doesn’t care because it betrays how much he actually does. Jared, somehow, was an exception to Chad’s rules. He doesn’t pretend to understand it, or Chad really for that matter, but he likes Chad and Chad tolerates him more than anyone else, so it works.

“Hey!” Jared grins.

“Where the hell have you been, man?” Chad slaps him hard on the shoulder and Jared stumbles slightly.

“Sick,” Jared answers easily. “Like meningitis or something.”

“Are you contagious?” Chad takes an exaggerated step backwards, hands held up like he can ward off illness if he can bat it away and it makes Jared laugh. “Swear to God, Jay, if you got me sick-”

“Jay?” Jared can practically hear Jensen’s head tilting to the side behind him.

A small stroke of helpless confusion and distress passes over Chad’s face as his eyes skip focus from Jared to over Jared’s right shoulder to where Jared can feel Jensen doing that thing where he’s trying not to loom but totally looming anyway.

“Dude.” Chad’s voice drops down into a low whisper. “What’s _he_ doing here?”

Jared doesn’t know if Chad knows that Jensen’s related to the ‘those people’ that he and Aldis sneer at from the lunch table or if maybe he just doesn’t like Jensen because he’s quiet and sad and strange, but Jared doesn’t appreciate the tone or the fact that he knows Jensen can hear.

“He switched up classes,” Jared says, a shade more snidely than he had intended and Chad’s confusion deepens but his attention shifts back to Jared. “Don’t be a dick.”

“I’m not being a dick,” Chad denies swiftly. “You’re gone for a week and come back and just start shooting off ‘dicks’ left and right? Rude, Jaybird, rude.”

The bell rings again and Jared flinches so hard that his backpack falls off and before Chad can even stoop to help Jensen’s there, collecting Jared’s spilled papers and staying a respectable distance away despite the fact Jared can see his fingers twitching to touch.

“Dude,” Chad repeats, drawing away with his shoulders uncomfortably from Jared’s contorted frame and Jensen’s eagerness to help. “What the hell—”

“Mr. Murray!” Mrs. Burrows is a severe looking woman with red rimmed glasses, hard eyes, and a sinkhole where her sense of humor should be and she’s always watching for Chad to make some infringement or another so she can swoop down like a falcon and carry him back to her nest of detention. “Take a seat!”

Chad shuffles off to his seat slowly, casting backwards glances as he goes.

“You too, Mr. Padalecki,” she intones sharply. “And…” Her sharp eyes narrow at Jensen shrewdly, searchingly, hunting for a name for a long moment before finally settling on, “Other boy.” She waves at them and the rest of the class bursts into giggles at Jensen’s expense.

Jensen doesn’t seem to notice or care, probably didn’t notice or care about Chad either and that irritates Jared in a way he can’t even begin to describe.

Jensen slings Jared’s backpack over the shoulder he isn’t using for his own and turns for the empty desks towards the back of the room but Jared stops him with a hard hand on the arm mid-turn.

“Ackles,” Jared grits pointedly, tongue scraping his clenched teeth.

“Excuse me?” Mrs. Burrows raises her brows.

“Jensen Ackles,” Jared reiterates slowly, pronouncing pointedly.

No one’s laughing anymore.

“What are you doing?” Jensen mutters under his breath, vexed.

Jared digs his fingers in harder to Jensen’s arm but doesn’t break the hard eye-contact with Mrs. Burrows until she relents for the sake of continuing class.

“Pardon me,” she bites off stiffly. “Mr. Ackles. Take a seat.”

Jared turns heel and doesn’t so much walk to the empty desk as he marches, Jensen keeping up behind him.

“What the hell?” Jensen demands.

“People shouldn’t treat you like that,” Jared clips. “And _you_ shouldn’t let them.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Jensen scoffs under his breath. “They’re just humans.”

Jared turns slowly and levels Jensen with a dead look. “Two weeks ago I was just a human. Did my opinion not matter?”

“I-” Jensen starts, but he doesn’t insult either of them by pretending.

Jared turns away.

-

For the most part Jensen leaves him to his own devices, just keeping a step or two behind. Jared’s not sure what Jensen’s expecting to happen at any given second of the day and the surveillance grates slightly but the fact that he’s back at school, surrounded by the small comforts of routine, is enough to soothe him.

Chad points out Jensen again during third, whispering, “Your stalker’s back,” when he thinks Jensen isn’t paying attention because he doesn’t realize, doesn’t know that Jensen can hear everything Jared can hear.

Jared punches him in the shoulder and tells him to cut it out.

“Ow,” Chad whines, looking wounded.

“What’s the matter, Jared? You sweet on him?” Aldis demands on a grin and even though there’s nothing but friendly teasing in that grin something in Jared’s chest seizes up, frigid.

“Maybe I just don’t like bullies,” Jared retorts sardonically and hopes like hell that the sharpness of his tone doesn’t compromise everything that it’s covering up.

“Dude,” Allison cuts in. “Chill out, will you?”

Jared rolls his eyes and starts packing up his bag.

“Where are you going?” Chad asks, half-demand half-whine.

Jared has half a mind to just bark ‘ _Away!’_ and leave without another word, not to return until his friends decide to stop being douchebags, but instead he just points to the clock which is telling them that there’s five minutes until the lunch bell.

“You gonna sit with us, or with your boyfriend?” Aldis inquires cheekily.

Jared shoots him the bird over his shoulder as he turns towards the door.

“What’s wrong?” Jensen materializes by his side. “Are you feeling okay? Do we need to leave?”

“I’m fine!” Jared snaps.

Jensen falls silently behind him, cowed.

Jared feels shitty. His ears are buzzing, his head is throbbing, he’s been unforgivably short with the handful of people he’s been able to establish connections with since moving up here, he’s sweaty, he’s pissed and the question does remain: who is he going to sit with at lunch?

The problem feels so much larger than it should.

This isn’t a John Hughes film. Where Jared sits in the cafeteria isn’t going to dictate who he is or what people say about him.

Except for how it totally will.

On the one hand he’s sat with Chad since the first day of school and he enjoys lunch time with them because it’s easy and stupid and Chad sticks fries up his nose trying to impress Sophia because somewhere in his mind the ability to snort potato byproduct into his sinuses is supposed to attract women. But on the other Jensen isn’t going to just ditch him for lunch. He’s going to follow Jared at that same respectable distance, giving Jared the room he needs to function independently but making himself available for when Jared’s knees start buckling and the world starts spinning and they’re going to talk about him, point Jensen out as an anomaly and whisper things about him because they don’t understand.

So he can sit with the people he’s always sat with, try and fit back into that hard carved niche and expose Jensen to ridicule, or he can sit with Jensen and expose himself.

“This is so fucked up,” Jared mutters under his breath.

Jensen doesn’t say anything.

The lunch bell rings and rings and rings in Jared’s ears, thrumming in the center of his head and it feels like his brain is swelling up tight in the empty cavity of his skull, ready to burst through explosively at any second.

He crumples against the lockers, breathing heavily into cold, dirty metal with chipping blue paint. He presses his forehead into the vents and his skin slips across the smoothness with accumulated sweat of the day.

Jensen’s there, right behind him, holding him upright with hands under his arm and at the small of his back.

“Come on,” he says. “Before the hallway gets filled.”

Jared nods sloppily, head rolling. “Yeah, alright.”

It takes him a second but he pulls himself together, takes a deep breath and drags himself to his upright and locked position. He runs his hand through his hair, slicking it back out of his face and straightens out his shirt, like it’s going to help make him look even vaguely more presentable.

The rubber soles of shoes dragging across the thin, checked tile of the school hallways sound like tires screeching and cars impacting to Jared and he wonders vaguely to himself what actually listening to tires screeching and cars impacting would sound like to him.

“You okay?” Jensen asks for the millionth time.

“Fine,” Jared retorts. “Just- lunch.”

Jensen looks Jared over skeptically but ultimately concedes.

The cafeteria sounds and smells like an unkempt carnival. Jared walks into a wall of _noise_ of hundreds of people talking all at once, tones and pitches clashing together like warfare and the _stink_ of every conflicting flavor, all of those bodies mingling with their sweat and their breath. It sends him reeling violently, stomach roiling and head hollowing out empty as his blood pressure plummets straight down to his feet and it feels, for all intents and purposes, like the air just punched him right in the fucking face.

Jensen’s hands are hot, too hot, and they’re on Jared’s jaw, angling his face up and Jared thinks that he’s talking, asking something, but Jared can’t hear over the _noise._

“No, no, we’re done,” Jensen growls decisively and Jared’s being manhandled and dragged.

People might be watching, whispering about him and adding to the drone of noise filling up Jared’s head so much that there’s no more room for his own thoughts but he doesn’t know, doesn’t even want to care because he’s burning up and his head is turning inside out.

Being a werewolf fucking sucks.

He stumbles where he’s lead, eyes squeezed shut so tightly that his eyes burn.

There’s a clatter, a crack, and then cool, quiet air is bathing over Jared’s face, washing him clean.

The first breath of air he sucks down feels like a baptism, being reborn out of layers of pain so subtle and compacted he hadn’t even realized he was suffering most of it until he can open his eyes in stuttered blinks and he realizes Jensen’s lead them out to the fields.

It smells like crisp winter and grass: clean, harmless.

“Oh my god,” Jared pants, breaths coming out in bursts of fog.

Jensen is doing most of the walking for him, Jared’s arm slung across the width of his shoulders and his feet stumbling ineffectively next to Jensen’s wide, sure strides.

“You’re alright,” Jensen assures as Jared’s head lolls onto his own shoulder.

“This is the worst,” Jared groans.

Jensen huffs a small laugh and hauls Jared’s arm more securely over his shoulder. “You’ll get used to it,” he assures but Jared doesn’t believe him. “You okay to sit down or do you want to stay up?”

“Down,” Jared moans and Jensen helps ease him down into the winter-coarse grass, stretched out like he’s being crucified. The earth is a solid support under Jared’s spine, holding him up and together all at once. The individual blades of grass are cool against his skin, licking his hands, up his wrists, his ankles where the cuff of his jeans pulled up, over his cheeks. A wind sweeps by, prying Jared’s hair out of his face and carrying the distinct, beautiful scent of nothingness and evergreen with it as it sweeps over his body and turns the burning of him cold.

Jensen eases himself down onto the field next to him facing out towards the forest, situated in the space between Jared’s outstretched arm and his torso. Not close enough that they’re touching, not even really close enough that Jared can call him on it. Just close enough that Jared notices. If Jared wanted to put his arm down by his side he wouldn’t be able to sweep it downwards without hitting Jensen’s back.

“Sorry,” Jensen says after a few minutes of blankness.

“It’s not your fault,” Jared mumbles back, drained.

“I shouldn’t have brought you back to school so soon. I should have waited.”

Jared scoffs and rolls his head along the ground, staring until Jensen glances back over his shoulder at him. “I did this,” Jared intones. “I wanted to come back to school. I made you take me. This one’s on me.”

Jensen looks him over for a few moments before turning back in favor of the tree line. There’s deeper, darker clouds rolling in from the distance, heavy with wet that’s going to come down on their heads in a few hours, probably.

“That thing you did earlier,” Jensen says without turning.

“Thing?” Jared repeats.

“With your friends. For me.”

Jared breathes slowly, waits.

“Thank you.”

Jared doesn’t do the gratitude the disservice of verbally accepting it. He sweeps his hand down through the cool prickles of grass until his fingers knock against one of Jensen’s ratty boots, nudging.

They sit in silence for a few minutes more before Jensen rolls out, laying out splayed in the grass next to Jared and they watch the clouds roll in.

Jared spends his lunch period with Jensen and when the bell rings again Jensen pulls together their things and walks Jared back to the house.


	11. Chapter 11

  
The muscles are bright red and glossy smooth, veins like road maps or sidewalk cracks in bright blues and darker pinks. The eyes are peeled white and veiny, one splotch of brown wide like he’s shocked. And it is a he, genitals hanging flat and useless between flayed thighs and pectoral muscles stretching in plain, smooth lines, unobstructed.

Jared flips the page in the Anatomy textbook to the plain bones of the human structure and feels a detached sort of resentment for the labeled figure.

Mrs. Arney’s father had suffered a mild indigestion that he had mistaken for a heart attack sometime in the early hours of the morning and she had abandoned her students to the day with a wet behind the ears substitute who was barely out of school himself, Mr. R-O-L- a squiggle that Jared thinks is either an A an O or a Y- N-D written up on the board in blocky handwriting right next to the assignments that they’re supposed to have done by the end of the day.

“This would go a lot faster if you did something, you know,” Jared snips as he flips another page in his textbook.

“I am doing something,” Jensen insists idly, crouched over another sheet of notebook paper he stole from underneath Jared’s elbow, fingers folding and smoothing edges over and over again. In the center of the table is a small congregation of paper boxes, frogs, and elephants.

“Something productive,” Jared intones.

“Productive for who?” Jensen snort a grin and flips the paper, folds it over again and Jared can’t tell what it’s going to be yet. “Ain’t my anatomy and I don’t need the grade for anything.”

Jared frowns. “I want to graduate, Jensen.”

“Go ahead.” Jensen shrugs. “Have fun. I’ll even go to the ceremony for you if you want.”

“I want to go to college.”

Jensen folds the paper up into itself and Jared sees that it’s a crane. “We’ve never had anyone go to college before,” he comments, generally impassive and something in Jared’s chest clenches up cold and fearful before he continues; “If you can apply to more local places that’d probably be better in the long run, honestly. I could get a job.”

“What?” Jared blinks.

“Renting a house,” Jensen says like that makes sense and ditches the paper crane in the pile with the other constructions. “So you could do school shit.”

“You’d come with me?” Jared feels his eyebrows crease and he sucks on his teeth.

“Well, yeah.” Jensen tears another piece of notebook paper. “I’m supposed to keep you out of trouble, remember?”

“Yeah, no –right,” Jared fumbles. “But, like, forever?”

Jensen shrugs again. “Until you have a real hang of things, I guess. Maybe in a year or two we’ll see about getting you some free space.”

“What about you?”

Jensen startles, tearing the edge of the paper. “What about me?”

“You’re going to derail your entire life just to follow me to some college for two years?”

Jensen rolls his eyes and sets back to the paper. “It’s either get a minimum wager here to dump into the pack account and work until I die or follow you wherever and _then_ get a job there and work until I die.”

“So none of you guys actually… do things?” The question comes out badly, offensive, and Jared winces at his own awkwardness.

Jensen folds, creases, folds, focusing so intently on his design Jared is sure after a moment that he’s just going to be ignored and the conversation will putter and die. In fact, Jared is about to give up altogether and go back to his anatomy work when Jensen mumbles softly, “It’s harder now.”

“Harder?” Jared asks, because every conversation with Jensen is like pulling teeth out of concrete.

“When I was thirteen all I wanted in the entire world was to grow up and take care of the chickens and the rabbits and work the fields and sell to the local market on Sundays. I wanted to mate young, have three children that my mother could spoil absolutely rotten, and I wanted to live.” He folds the paper over again, nimble fingers coaxing layers and layers of the notebook paper into a little lotus flower. “There aren’t any fields here. We can’t ever go back.”

He plants the flower right in the center of the man in Jared’s textbook’s chest, white paper petals stark against all that open red muscle.

“Mark likes cars,” Jensen continues, but he doesn’t look at Jared. “Before all we had was the Suburban, he used to tinker around with the engine with Jeff. I don’t think he ever would have been able to fall in love with cars if none of this ever happened. Norman works in the scrap yard on York and he makes things. Sculptures. He sees twisted up metal and he makes it into art. The apartment’s full of it. And Danneel, she likes clothes. She likes making herself new each morning and in Silvalopus she would have never been able to. Alona likes pottery. Patrick likes books, reading. Jon likes music, he’s good at it. He bought a guitar and he’s teaching himself how to play songs.”

Jensen scratches at the corner of another blank sheet of paper absently. “It’s harder now,” he says again.

The world is so big and Silvalopus was so small, Jared thinks. He swallows dryly and tries to lick some feeling back into his lips. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean for it to come out like-”

“Don’t worry about it.” Jensen flashes him the ghost of a smile. “Do your work, college boy.”

“Yeah,” Jared grins. “I’m gonna go get some water first.”

“Yeah, okay,” Jensen grunts and starts to stand up.

“By myself,” Jared intones. “First step. I’ll be right down the hall and I think in the seventeen seconds it takes me to find and use the water fountain I’m going to be okay.”

Jensen looks hesitant and Jared smiles, rolls his eyes, and cuffs Jensen’s shoulder on his way past.

The sub waves him off when he comes by for a pass, telling him to just go, and Jared shrugs and ambles out through the long hall.

He doesn’t know where any of the fountains are in this damn place, and he’s been here for over two months and it’s not like the place is bigger –or nicer or cleaner, for that matter- than his old school, so he actually does have to wander a bit before he stumbles across one, tucked up in a corner next to the trash cans in the science hall.

The water tastes tinny and Jared is genuinely disgruntled to have to put it in his mouth, let alone his body and has the momentary thought that he could have probably hinted at being thirsty until Jensen had volunteered to slip out and grab something from the gas station down the road or something. The thought is amusing and definitely appealing in the face of the questionable plumbing of the school, the thought makes Jared uncomfortable.

Jensen would do it, there’s not a doubt in Jared’s mind. If he hinted hard enough, played pathetic enough, he could probably get Jensen to do anything for him.

He swipes the back of his hand over his mouth uncomfortably, straightens up to his full height, and turns around nearly straight into Chad’s chest.

“Whoa,” Jared grins. “Hey, man. Sorry, I didn’t realize you were, like… hovering.”

Chad’s expression remains unaffected and Jared’s smile wavers.

“Are you okay?” Jared asks tentatively.

The muscle in Chad’s jaw jumps as he clenches his teeth, eyes narrowing. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Jared recoils. “What?”

“You disappear for a week –a fucking week-,” Chad hisses, pointing in exaggerated, aggressive assertion. “And you come back and suddenly you’re b-f-fucking-f’s with Jensen _fucking_ Ackles, Jared?”

“You’re high,” Jared realizes aloud through his own offense.

“So?” Chad scoffs and scrubs a hand through his hair with twitchy hands. His hair is clumped up and he’s wearing the same shirt he was wearing yesterday. Jared wonders where he spent the night last night if it wasn’t at home with his mom. “This isn’t about me; this is about you,” Chad pokes him hard in the chest and Jared stumbles back a half step into the wall to avoid the assault, “and your new Siamese twin.”

“What is your problem?” Jared snaps.

“My problem, Jarhead,” he sneers, “Is that it took me two fucking days to get you alone and you thought I wouldn’t notice that you’re wearing one of his shirts!”

The blood drains out of Jared’s face so fast that he actually gets lightheaded. “Shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Which, I mean, don’t get me wrong, dick where you gotta dick, even if it means you’ll start accidentally wearing vintage _Pixies_ shit,” Chad rambles on like Jared hadn’t said anything, stepping in closer, cornering Jared and every fiber of Jared’s being rebels against the notion of being trapped. “But with _that guy_?”

“Fuck you,” he hurls back on reflex, and his teeth ache in his gums.

“So now, what?” Chad forges on, steam rolling the conversation and stepping in closer so Jared can feel the chemicals on Chad’s breath crackle against his skin and it itches. “You’re driving him to school? Wearing his shit? He switched into all of your classes? That’s fucking creepy, Jared! He’s probably grooming you for some weird hazing or- or, like, ritual sacrifice with his weird ass family of fucking _freaks!_ ”

He feels it in his spine first. A twist and crack like something he’s clung to desperately is being torn out of the fundamental humanity of him and Jared screams. Screams because it hurts. Screams because it feels good.

“Dude!” Chad scrambles backwards when Jared pitches forward, doubled over with his hands clutched to his stomach, sharp teeth bared as he pants.

Jared gags and coughs against the feeling, the alien intrusion and the stresses of the moment.

“Are… are you okay?” Chad asks awkwardly, red eyes wide and finicky. His right hand joggles at his side and Jared can hear the fabric of his sleeve twist against his skin, pulling against fine hairs and smelling of sticky, sweet, smoky, awful.

When Jensen comes he smells like honeysuckle candles and burnt paper in a swirl of jacket and aggressive hands, shoving Chad out of the way and barking, “Go!”

And Chad goes.

And Jared tries to breathe.

And Jensen sighs. Says, “Oh, I’ll go alone, Jensen. It’s right down the hall, Jensen. It’s gonna take like seventeen seconds, Jensen.” as he ducks under one of Jared’s arms and puts a gentle hand on his back.

“Fuck you, too,” Jared huffs through his heavy panting, leaning most of his weight into Jensen. “I just wanted some water.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Jensen rolls his eyes. “You good?”

“Give me a minute,” Jared grunts.

“You want to go back to the house?”

Jared does.

-

“How?” Jared’s looking up at the ceiling and notices all over again that Jensen’s drawn little stars in pencil on the blank whiteness. He cocks his head to the side, sheets bunching up between his ear and his neck as he squints one eye and tries to see if he can find any constellations he’d recognize from three years of not paying attention in boy scouts.

“How what?” Jensen hums back over his shoulder as he works at cutting the last of the wax out of a candle jar with his nails.

Jared rolls over onto his stomach and props his chin on the back of his folded hands. “The shift thing. How does it work? How do I do it? Is it, like, only a full moon thing where you go full wolf out or,” he trails off and gestures to Jensen’s clawed hand.

“You can shift whenever,” Jensen assures on a shrug. “But during full moon, she demands it.”

The way Jensen says ‘moon’ and ‘she’ hold a distinct air of regality Jared hasn’t fully yet wrapped his head around, mostly because Jensen’s face usually sours when he’s using that tone and Jared’s having a tough time reconciling the two conflicting emotions.

“Yeah, but, _how?_ ” Jared asks again.

Jensen looks at him blankly. “How do you shift?”

“Yeah.” Jared nods. “Is there some sort of stretch I need to do first? Should I start, like, limbering up? Is it a spell?”

“I-” Jensen starts and stalls out. He blinks at Jared and then stares at the wall deeply.

-

“Hey, guys?” Jensen pokes his head into the playroom to find the Nikki, Jenna, and Robby all sitting on the floor, not as asleep as Rebecca wishes they were, folded all over themselves as they watch _Mickey Mouse Clubhouse_ raptly. “Guys?”

“No!” Nikki shouts at the screen. “No, Toodles! I wanted the mystery tool to be a tiger! We needed a tiger!”

“ _Come on! Let’s all buckle our seatbelts together!”_ the television chirps.

“Go away, Mickey!”

“Guys!”

Three little pairs of big, bright eyes turn Jensen’s way and faces that had been previously painted with irritation light up brightly.

“Jesen!” Robby scrambles up and the three of them race over to swamp against his knees, sending Jensen stumbling back into Jared with the force.

“Who’s that?” Jenna whispers at a volume Jensen’s sure she thinks is covert as she clings to his calf, fingers digging in.

“Listen,” Jensen appeals and his knees pop as he lowers himself to a crouch, putting himself on their level. “This is Mr. Jared.” He looks up with them, up and up and up, to Jared.

Jared glances around between the four of them, expression flitting between amused, confused, and distressed.

“Hi,” he says and waves one hand bashfully.

“Hi, Mr. Jared,” they chorus with fingers in mouths, toes grinding into the carpet, and eyes averted.

“You smell like sad,” Jenna pipes up.

“Oh.” Jared rubs at the back of his neck. “Sorry?”

“Is he staying here forever?” Nikki asks.

Jared looks to Jensen.

“Uh,” Jensen fumbles. “Maybe. If you like him.”

“He’s tall,” Robby mumbles into his own chin, ducking shyly into Jensen’s shoulder. “Can I be tall like that one day?”

“Yeah,” Jared says before Jensen can answer, voice soft. He crouches slowly, like he’s afraid he’s going to scare the little ones away, which Jensen supposes isn’t illegitimate considering how they cling to him more tenaciously every inch closer Jared gets, until he’s sitting on the ground next to them, legs crossed, posture open. They don’t really meet new people every day. “One day, sure.”

“Oh.” Robby’s nose is buried into Jensen’s shoulder, but Jensen can feel him smile.

“Jensen?” Nikki whispers loudly, lacking any concept of tact but pronouncing clearly right into Jensen’s ear. “Does he know how to make hair like Danni and Kat?”

Jensen curls his lips into teeth to stifle a smile.

“Make hair? What does that mean?” Jared looks them over, trying to duck his head around to get a clear view of who asked but Nikki edges around Jensen, ducking behind Jenna.

“She wants to play with your hair,” Jensen explains, grinning.

“Oh.” Jared looks mildly shocked for a moment before recovering swiftly with a short laugh. “Okay, yeah, sure.”

“Really?” Jenna squeals, delighted to the point of wriggling over Jensen’s lap instead of taking the extra three steps to walk around his legs. Nikki just bowls him over, laying him out flat on his back with a wheeze in her hurry to get to Jared’s hair. By the time Jensen collects himself enough to scrape his body off the floor Robby is sitting in his lap, chewing on his own hand and Jenna and Nikki have dragged out their plastic princess vanity box, stuffed to the gills with small combs and clips and glitter glue, scuffling for headspace.

Jared props his chin in his hands and his elbows on his knees, smiling gently as the little girls grab clumps of hair and start to pull small brushes through it without compassion, giggling.

“Actually, guys,” Jensen says as he weaves his fingers together over Robby’s stomach and props his chin on the little boy’s head, curling around the tiny body in his lap and Robby plays with Jensen’s veins, blocking the blue flow of the lines spiraling over the back of Jensen’s hands with his little fingers until the vein emptied out and then releasing it again to his own delight. “Mr. Jared and I have a question for you.”

“Mm-hm?” Jenna hums as she clips what seems to Jensen to be a random lock of Jared’s hair, setting it standing straight up.

“How do you shift?”

“Huh?” Nikki looks over her shoulder at Jensen like she thinks he’s an idiot, like he just asked her how to breathe or sleep or walk.

“Like,” Jared jumps in, “How do you get there? What changes in you?”

“My legs,” Robby offers.

Jared huffs a laugh. “Yes, that. But what else? Not your body but how do _you_ change?”

“How’s it start?” Jenna asks, clarifying.

“Yeah.” Jared nods, jostling thick pink and purple clips.

Nikki helps herself to Jared’s lap, crawling in on bony little knees that dig deep into the inner meat of Jared’s thighs with bruising force, muscling Jared out of her way until she can settle facing him, expression a mask of scrutiny that has Jared blinking and falling back to rest on his palms for breathing room.

“It’s Moon,” she says.

Jenna nods sagely.

“I don’t understand.” Jared’s mouth twists downwards and he looks to Jensen for interpretation but Jensen is just as confused.

Nikki’s little hand looks even smaller pressed up against Jared’s chest when she plants it solidly in the center of Jared’s sternum, earning a hollow little _thunk_ and a grunt. “Right here,” she says emphatically. “It feels like Moon right here and you have to let it fill you up until you feel like you’re gonna ‘splode. And then you just let go.”

It feels like Moon.

The Moon on your chest, in your chest, filling you up until it tears you apart and you have to trust it to put you back together again on the other side. Moon in your veins. Faith and light and emotion in your blood.

Jensen’s nodding along without registering the movements.

It feels like Moon.

Right there.

-

“No, you’re not getting it,” Jensen huffs.

“Obviously I’m not getting it, Jensen.” Jared scowls harshly, arms crossed over his naked chest. His shirt and his shoes are folded and stacked neatly on a moss-green and winter-dry tree stump next to where Jensen wadded up all of his own clothes and dashed them in a pile to the ground before placing his boots on top. Jared had drawn the line at his jeans, though, and Jensen hadn’t pressed the issue.

Jared’s a little gangly all over, like someone put him through a taffy puller. His skin is tan by nature rather than actual sun exposure, but it still pinks up in the cold. The flush is high up on his cheeks and the tips of his ears, painting his lips redder and pulling the nipples that he’s trying to cover up with a modesty that still baffles and astounds Jensen tight.

“You have to feel it,” Jensen intones, gesturing to his own bare chest, sucking in his stomach like showing Jared his diaphragm is going to make some difference somehow.

“You keep saying that and it keeps not helping!”  Jared shoots him a sardonic look in the darkness.

Jensen sighs heavily, the noise rattling up from his lungs as he scrubs a hand over his face. “This isn’t working.”

Jared pulls a ‘duh’ face and pulls his arms in tighter. “It’s not my fault.”

The sun is setting off in the distance, hemorrhaging reds and purples all over the horizon as it dies. The colors glance off of the slope of Jared’s cheekbones, painting him in shades of blue and the blackness of the shadows of bare branches spreading over his skin like spindly skeletons. A few wafer-thin snowflakes float down lazily in a general ‘sideways’ direction, specks of hazy white in the blackness. They’ll thicken up in time, get denser and wetter and come down fast and heavy like balls of raw cotton, but for now the snow is small and dry. The forest is tall and dark all around them, looming and Jared looks uncomfortable with such open proximity to nature.

Jensen understands, but he doesn’t really.

He and forest have touched each other all of their lives, night has clutched him throughout his infancy and held him tight as he ascended into adulthood, Moon has always been there for him, whether he wanted Her or not.

Should it be so much different for Jared? Jared, who can’t feel the Moon, can’t let it out.

What does Moon feel like? Jensen reflects.

Moon is cold, Moon is lonely, Moon is dark, Moon is bright, Moon is brilliant.

Moon isn’t something that can be explained.

-

Jared watches Jensen stare out past the trees and into the rapidly darkening sky and his breath fogs up around his nose when he breathes out.

“Jensen?” Jared nearly whines after the moment elapses far too long for his comfort. He’s already shirtless and barefoot in the middle of the woods, he needs to catch a break in here somewhere.

Jensen snaps out of whatever reverie he’s fallen into. “Sorry.” He shakes himself.

“It’s not a problem,” Jared assures on a shrug.

Jensen scratches at his eyebrow and sighs, long and loud. “I guess we can wait until full moon and maybe you can put it together for yourself after that.”

“Oh.” Jared frowns and feels a strange, sudden pang of disappointment that he hadn’t expected. Not that he had really been looking forward to breaking himself into pieces, but still. There’s a shiny new piece of Jared that he doesn’t know about himself and he wants to stretch it out and see how it moves. “Okay…”

Jensen sweeps by their clothes, plucking up his own and moving swiftly towards the edge of the clearing.

“Wait!” Jared calls and scrambles for his shirt and shoes. “Jensen, wait up!”

Jared stumbles after Jensen, pulling the shirt over his head and hopping on one foot while simultaneously trying to jam his foot into the worn out Adidas sneaker that used to belong to his brother, once upon a time.

“Jensen!” He calls out again but as soon as he has his head popped through the collar and can look around he realizes that he is very much alone in the darkness.

Jared thinks the stars might have come out, but it’s hard to tell through the cloud cover. The snow, though, the flecks of white dancing down towards him in the bleak greyness look like falling stars streaking down to the earth for him.

“Jensen!” he shouts.

There’s no response in the hollowness of the forest.

“Son of a bitch!” Jared kicks at the stump and gets nothing but a hurt foot for his troubles.

There are owls in the darkness that make cold, throaty sounds that echo like empty threats, reverberating off the trees and assaulting Jared’s person. Jared thinks can see flashes of their ghostly pale moon faces through the black branches. There are other animals too, ones that have names Jared doesn’t know, small animals with small feet that breathe harshly and scurry through the leaves, little claws scratching dried, crinkled leaves. They all smell, stink, reek of themselves and Jared screams again, “Jensen!”

The sounds of the night are cut through by a howl, sharp and sleek like a knife and it drags on and on, drowning out everything else and pushing the air out of Jared’s lungs sideways.

“Jensen?” he croaks.

The wolf steps into the clearing growling. Teeth bared, fur standing straight up all the way down his spine and he stalks in with his head held low, yellow eyes cutting.

Jared tries to scream and gasp all at once and just ends up choking and falling over himself backwards, stumbling to the ground and cutting up his hands on jagged stick and sharp, cold rocks.

He starts with ‘Jensen’ again but only gets to the “Juh,” before the wolf snarls and he’s cowering backwards, scuttling like a crab floundering through hot sand until his back hits a tree and he’s cornered.

Jared trembles and braces himself back into the tree. “Jensen,” he whimpers and the wolf jerks, fur jumping and a long, thin tongue snaking out from between those long sharp teeth. ”Jensen, please! This isn’t funny!”

The wolf stalks forward on stiff legs and Jared has the crazy thought –what if this isn’t Jensen? What if this is just some wild, feral animal that found him and Jensen’s halfway down the mountain already, thinking that Jared’s half a step behind him?

“Oh god,” Jared gasps wetly.

The wolf lunges and Jared does the only thing instinct will let him do.

He strikes back.

Palm open, Jared lashes out and something startling like lightning flashes through him, crackling in his lungs when he snarls and it races through his bones like wildfire. It sings through his nail beds and the wolf yelps and falters and Jared’s hand comes back bloody and clawed.

“Oh, shit!” Jared shouts, horrified at his own disfigurement. Blackened nails twist out of his fingers, curved and tapered into a point. “Oh, holy fucking shit!” he screams and cuts his tongue on sharp teeth. A flawless white flake of snow falls to his palm and melts instantaneously into the hot blood streaking his hands.

He knew he wasn’t human, but there’s such a difference between knowing and seeing.

The fear of himself paralyzes Jared solid for a moment before he hears the growling rise up again and when he whips his head around the wolf isn’t where he left him, and then the new fear, the angry fear, rises up in him fast and violent like a tsunami.

Jared feels fear but on top of that, over that, surrounding and smothering that is an emotion, a swelling of what he can only describe as ‘no’. ‘No’ rises up within him, painful and consuming as he swivels around to face the wolf head on.

The pain shoots up high into his cheekbones as his teeth elongate, sucking themselves right out of his gums, and he bares them streaked with his own blood to the wolf.

The ‘no’ comes in like a riptide and overwhelms him with agony so fierce that he’s forced to recognize that the emotion isn’t ‘no’, or fear, or anger, or any one independent thing. It’s strong and righteous and the only thing that he owns out here in the middle of the wilderness.

Moon. Moon. Is this what Moon feels like?

It tears across his skin and crackles through his bones, twisting and mutilating. He hears pops and cracks, all the while waiting for the wolf to lunge and finish his prey off while Jared’s distracted with tearing himself out of his clothes to make room for the new pieces that are chewing their way out of him. There’s dirt in his eyes, dead leaves in his hair –all of his hair, on his head the thick fur spurting from his pores.

He squeezes his eyes shut tight and gasps so hard that his jaw cracks, pops, dislocates, and folds out.

The entire shift is hard to process. So much pain happening all over his body all at once and Jared’s brain is trying hard to shut down against the onslaught of sensation, but that feeling, that strength that’s fortifying Jared’s insides and swapping them around to be more accommodating for what his outsides are trying to be, won’t let him.

His tongue thins out, grows longer, and it’s the strangest thing Jared’s ever felt in his god damn life until the pressure building in his spine shatters like glass and he feels bones clattering out of him, whipping from his spine like a tail, until flesh and fur grow up over it and it _is_ a tail.

He lets himself collapse into the dirt for a half second -stretched to capacity and exhausted beyond reason- before he’s struggling upright because the wolf is still there and Jared still will not back down.

The colors of the world are diluted but the shapes are so much sharper than Jared could have ever imagined, definition beyond reason and he tries not to get distracted by the shape of the skeletal leaves crushed on the ground or the texture of the bark or the strange feeling of air carding through his fur as he twists a stilted little circle on strange new legs or the _sounds_ , looking for the other animal in the clearing.

The wolf is sitting on the other side of the clearing between tree roots, silent and still.

The wolf smells, looks, and _feels_ like Jensen.

Jensen makes a low, questioning sound and noses forward into the air, concern in his expression and stance.

Are you okay, he’s asking.

There’s a dark streak of wet slicking his fur to his skin down the side of his neck, back behind his ear. If he’d been actually aiming for Jared the gouges would have been taken out of his face and Jared thinks he understands, even though it takes him a few moments to really wrap his head around the notion of Jensen actually scaring the wolf out of him.

Jared stares at the dark stain wetting down the side of Jensen’s neck and chest and fights a strange, sudden urge to lick the scratch clean.

Jared shakes the thought away, world spinning jerkily around him and the tips of his ears whip his forehead and it’s the strangest thing he’s ever done, felt, or seen in the whole history of his existence.

A nose prods up against his cheekbone and Jared stumbles slightly away from the unexpected contact, but then Jensen’s sniffing him over and Jared’s tail curls up between his legs and he yelps, really scrambling away because his human modesty seems to have survived the transfer with him.

He stumbles, four feet getting tangled up underneath his body and he falls and Jensen’s back, sniffing and whining over him.

Jared bats him away with the furry thing that used to be a hand, sends all the ‘hand’ signals to his brain when he pats away Jensen’s black little nose, but is really a paw.

He stares at it intently up in the air.

Well.

Alright.

The snow starts coming down thicker, with fatter flakes starting to stick to the forest floor instead of just melting away upon immediate impact and Jared struggles to coordinate all of his moving parts to sit up before the cold melts too deep into his fur.

Because fur is a thing he has to worry about now.

Jensen is at his side, muscling him upright with a shoulder levering up Jared’s side, back hips keeping Jared’s hindquarter in line until he’s precariously balanced on his own four legs, braced out like the earth is going to give out underneath him.

He starts with his front right arm… leg… thing, flexing the muscles and moving. He steps forward, leaving the other three paws firmly where they were planted so he’s stretched uncomfortably because he doesn’t know which leg he’s supposed to move next to walk.

Jensen yips and Jared cuts his eyes to see the other boy –wolf- twitching and grinning and Jared narrows his eyes when he realizes that the fucker is actually _laughing_ at him.

Jared lunges stiltedly and Jensen just dances backwards through the snow, deftly avoiding the advance without losing eye contact because Jared is so sloppy.

Jensen moves like music or river water, smooth and swift and easy, even when Jared snaps half-playfully at his ears because Jared moves like a rock slide into a turnip field, stumbling and nearly falling again.

Jensen huffs one last laugh and then prances around to Jared’s side and matching his position.

He jerks his chin – _follow me, watch me, do as I do-_ and begins to strut a gait so exaggerated Jared feels a sharp bark of a sound escape his throat like laughter. He watches Jensen’s tail swing in what might be considered the equivalent of staring at Jensen’s ass, only seven thousand times more socially acceptable.

It takes maybe an hour for Jared to start to understand his new muscle groups and how to use them, Jensen turning circles around him and wriggling like he’s giggling the entire time, grinning a toothy grin but he’s there every step of the way, making an intentional fool of himself to be an example that Jared can use.

It’s another hour before Jared starts to pick up running, Jensen egging him on by nipping at his heels and tugging at his ears like the way Harley and Sadie used to when they were puppies and the thought makes Jared want to laugh like a little kid and follow along. He wants to _play._

So they play.

Jensen burns a path and Jared follows, chasing Jensen’s tail through the snow and over logs and through streams and leaves and low branches until he can’t breathe because he’s panting so hard, tongue lolling out of his mouth and snow packing onto his overheated back until he pounces, pins Jensen to the ground once for scaring the shit out of him, and then again just because he can.

Jensen stares up at him, properly abashed and not twisting away from Jared’s paws pinning his shoulders like they both know he could. Jared sits resolutely on his stomach and Jensen coughs up a wheeze and Jared laughs with his body until he can’t breathe.

They dance through the forest until the dawn starts to break.

-

“Tell me about werewolves,” Jared appeals, throat a little scratchy from howling all night. His shirt is tatters in the snow, but the jeans were salvageable enough.

“What about them?” Jensen retorts, tossing his own shirt over at Jared to replace the ruined one because they both know Jared cares more about covering up than Jensen does.

“Where do they come from?” Jared ducks into the steel grey thermal, sleeves overlapping his palms and collar stretched out wide enough to hang from his collarbones.

“They say that in the beginning we were gypsies,” Jensen says wistfully and reclines back onto the dead bark of a tree torn up from the ground by the roots a long time before either of them could even say the word ‘storm,’ clinging awkwardly to being alive while still simultaneously committing itself to being dead with only a few roots buried deep that try to support the whole form. Jensen’s bare chest stands out against the thin white of the snowfall, a single swatch of color in a colorless world.

Jensen’s ribs press out against his skin when he reaches up to tuck his hand behind the curve of his skull to pillow his head, exposing the dark hair of his underarms and emphasizing the size and strain of his biceps as he stares up into the canopy of needled trees high above. The vision is strangely intimate: bare chest, exposed neck, vulnerable belly, the openness of the part of his arms that are always and only allowed to press up into his own body. Jared looks until he’s uncomfortable by his own interest and has to glance away.

“A long, long time ago, before people and wilderness were different things, we wandered the country sides in the darkness. Everyone else was an outsider, they were the meat we fed upon. In the winters the people would roam from civilization to civilization and do whatever we had to do to get what we needed. In the summer we worked the shores for food and for a long time there was nothing but the cycle of the seasons that brought us to people and brought us to the wild, and the tides that brought the fish and the tides that brought them back out, and all was well in the cycle of life until the wolves came,” Jensen says, reciting like it’s a bedtime story he knows by heart.

“Is this story going to end in bestiality?” Jared asks hesitantly as he sits on the ground next to the tree where Jensen’s sprawled, resting back against the thick trunk.

Jensen laughs, abrupt like the sound was startled out of him, and looks over his arm. “No!”

“I’m just checking!” Jared holds up his hand defensively, grinning.

Jensen shakes his head and settles back into the pillow of his own hands. “The wolves came in the summer and they brought death with them. On the first night the wolves came and they took the fish and the people wept and on the second night the wolves came again and they took the sons and the people wept and on the third day the people prayed to their sun to stay up forever and keep the wolves away, because they knew that the wolves would only come for them at night. But sun was too high in the sky and couldn’t hear them. And the people wept. When night came again they huddled together and wondered if their daughters would be taken next, and they were so desperate that they prayed to the moon and begged for her to leave and take her animals with her and she came to them in the reflection of the water and spoke to them. She could not leave, because if she left she’d take her tides and her silver light with her and the fishermen would have nothing to eat and then they would still die. She couldn’t give them what they wanted. But moon was kind and beautiful, and she said that she couldn’t change herself, but she could change them. She could turn them into their own fears, give them teeth to bite and a pelt to keep them warm. All she wanted in return was one night a month, when she was closest and could hear the best, that they would sing her songs. The people agreed and moon broke them.” Jensen smiles fondly to himself. “She ripped them apart, tore out their spines and made them feel pain that they had never imagined existed beforehand, and they learned that the moon had two faces: the beautiful one and the one in the dark. She gave them what they wanted, what they needed, but her silver light cut them and for one night a month she did not ask for worship, she demanded it.”

“Damn,” Jared muses. “The moon sounds cold.”

“No,” Jensen says softly. “She just loves music.”

Jared glances up and Jensen’s watching him with gentle eyes and for a crazy moment Jared thinks they’re going to kiss. Jared could stretch his neck up, angle open his throat and rest his head back against the tree and Jensen could lean down, twisting to his side over his arm and press their lips together.

Jared’s breath hitches in his throat.

In a clearing in the middle of nowhere with the sunlight swimming through the leaves Jared leans up, stretches his neck.

“We should head back,” Jensen whispers quickly and rolls away.

“Right.” Jared blinks at the blank space where Jensen used to be.


	12. Chapter 12

  
The next week at school is like the first except better. Not by much, but by enough.

Jensen wakes up when his body is hard-wired programmed to wake up and realizes all over again that Jared is a stealth snuggler and sometime during the night Jensen became his unwitting victim. They always start the night with their backs to each other, edged against the side of the bed and the wall, but now Jared’s arm is slung over Jensen’s neck, a barely comfortable weight along the side of his throat that curls up around his head, fingers wound into the loose fabric of the pillowcase. Jensen can feel the point of Jared’s nose gouging into the slope of his shoulder and the flare and ebb of hot breath as it sinks into the soft cotton of his t-shirt and then fades away. There’s a leg tossed over Jensen’s and Jensen presses his lips together to swallow a fond little smile and he lets Jared sleep in until five.

They take Jared’s car, which is strange and a little scary for Jensen, whose most profound experience with vehicles is when he was thrown into the back of one once. Sure there had been the bumpy truck rides into town when he was younger, but all of that was eclipsed by the move and Jensen spends every drive with his eyes closed and his teeth gritted, waiting for something awful to happen. 

Nothing ever does and Jared never teases him.

Jared’s mood starts to dip right around the time they hit the door and the mass stink of human that the high school exudes and Jensen stands back and lets Jared have his day to himself, keeping an eye out for anything triggering that might get either of them in any sort of trouble that could get back to Alpha. 

But Jared keeps to himself, stays calm, stays collected, and Jensen only has to step in once more when Jared nearly collapses when a girl sitting two rows over from him pulls a sandwich out of her bag that had obviously been trapped between two books for a number of weeks. 

Jared’s friends shoot them looks sometimes and Jensen never really points their attentions out, but Jared notices that he notices and just turns his nose up at them and Jensen doesn’t ask. 

They spend their lunch periods out on the field, alone in the chill of winter and they talk sometimes or watch the clouds, but they come back and Jared toughs out the last few periods until they’re free and then he drives with the window down, speeding down Main Street and sometimes around then Jensen can open his eyes and watch the scenery streak by them. 

Jensen takes Jared into the forest after dinners on their human feet and teaches him the same way he was taught, tag and hide and seek to learn the lay of the land, shoving and rough housing to know how the body works and just how far it will go. They’ll play into the dark, Jared laughing until he’s red in the face and Jensen grinning along with him before they hike back down, hit the mattress in the early morning and catch a few hours before getting up and doing it all over again. 

Jensen hits the door Friday afternoon exhausted and ready to pass out for a few hours. 

“Read!” Nikki strikes the second the door is shut behind him, pulling on his hand hard enough to get him stumbling a step forward. 

“Nikki, come on,” Jensen appeals, trying to subtly disengage his arm. “It’s been a long week and Mr. Jared and I are very tired and I’m sure he doesn’t want to-”

“No,” Jenna protests indignantly, taking up Nikki’s game and grabbing Jensen’s other hand. “There’s been no read in forever! Read to us, Jesen!”

“I don’t mind,” Jared offers and that’s how Jensen ends up on the floor crammed between two beds with a charred leather-bound copy of _Le Petit Prince_ in his lap, Nikki and Jenna curled together on one bed and Jared on the other with Robby sitting still in his lap, sucking on his thumb and observing the book with deep brown eyes.

“Okay,” Jensen heaves a sigh and flips through to the English translation, one of the five in the edition. “The Little Prince.”

“No,” Jenna whines. “Do it in the voice!”

“I’m not reading it in French, Jen,” Jensen says vehemently. “It takes too long and little puppies need their sleep.”

“You speak French?” Jared asks, head tilting to the side as he looks strangely and incredibly impressed by the insight.

Jensen makes a face. He doesn’t, not really. Just the stuff that his mother taught him, the things he needed to get by in a stilted conversation about the quality of chickens and pork when trying to sell to the Moroccan butcher and his wife for some spending money when he was twelve and that’s what he thought he wanted to do with the rest of his life, and everything in this book that his mother used to read to him as a child. He’d point at the pictures and demand she explain, in the silly words, what was going on and he’d giggle and mimic her over and over until the entire story was ingrained in his head, backwards and forwards in English and French because it just sounded so much lovelier in its mother tongue.

“I’m a little rusty,” Jensen admits, though he’s never really considered French to be among his skill set.

“Mr. Jared wants to hear it in the funny voice,” Nikki pipes in.

“I want to hear the funny voice,” Robby adds in a mumble around his fingers.

Jensen stalls out as long as he can but then Jared’s grinning at him and whispering, “It’s not gonna hurt,” and Jensen is flipping back through to the front of the book and a small illustration of little boy with yellow hair standing alone on an asteroid.

“ _Le Petit Prince,_ ” Jensen begins, using the voice his mother gave him. “ _d’Antoine de Saint-Exupéry._ ”

He probably flubs half the words and most of them don’t make real sense to him anymore outside of the context of the story but the girls are enraptured, leaning over his shoulders and pointing to the pictures and the words, trying to pronounce them again and again until Jensen corrects their form to something vaguely less atrocious for the first few pages before they settle back down on the bed and start to drift as Jensen tells them about a lost man in the middle of the desert who finds a little boy with golden hair and a scarf that just wants to go home to his rose because he didn’t understand how to love her in his youth. 

The little prince journeys from planet to planet, meeting kings and businessmen and lamp lighters until finally he comes to earth and meets a fox who wants to be tamed because there are a million foxes in the world and a million little boys, but to tame something is to make it unique and it gives life meaning. Nikki asks and he tries to explain, has to flip through to the English version to find the right words but then they force him back to French. The taming is a slow process, the little prince sitting closer and closer to the fox until they’ve tamed one another and one hour is different from the other hours and life has companionship and purpose. Jenna giggles sleepily, whispers, “Foxes can’t talk.”

When the prince leaves the fox cries and the prince apologizes for the heartache he’s causing, points out that the fox wanted to be tamed and the fox says of course, of course he wanted to be tamed, even if it was going to hurt in the end. 

“ _ Tu deviens responsable pour toujours de ce que tu as apprivoisé,”  _ Jensen reads, glancing up at Jared. Jared grins at him and doesn’t understand. Jensen flushes and looks back to the book, reading on. 

His mother used to change the ending for him, cutting off abruptly that the man and the prince went away together and had many adventures and found many roses and Jensen likes to think that she was trying to protect him, because it took him years of looking at the same pictures over her shoulders until he began to piece together the true tragedy of the book with a man and a little boy alone in the middle of the desert with an extravagant story and a snake.

Jensen still thinks he doesn’t really _get it,_ and really he never wants to understand on a level deeper than the perception of a child because it would ruin something, but he doesn’t shield the little ones from the truth of the ending the way his mother did, reads straight through to the appeal, _if a boy appears who laughs, who has golden hair and who refuses to answer questions, you will know who he is. If this should happen, please comfort me. Send me word that he has come back._

“ _Ne me laissez pas tellement triste : écrivez-moi vite qu’il est revenu…”_ Jensen finishes with a sore throat and a cracked voice. Deep breathing fills the void his voice leaves when he cuts out and Jensen glances over to see Jared’s chest rising and falling in a steady pace alongside Robby’s, fast asleep.

\--

Jensen wakes up Saturday morning as the sun is breaking the horizon in bloody reds and purples leaking into the clouds. He watches through the window, Jared’s head pillowed on his chest, mouth lax and face smooth. His knee is gouging hard into Jensen’s thigh and his shirt is statically attached to Jensen’s.

Usually around now Alona would drop by and ask him if he wanted to walk with her to the mall. Goad him outside and into interacting with the world like a worm breaking dirt to writhe in the sunshine for the first time.

She doesn’t, and Jensen’s okay with that.

He settles and drifts off again.

-

“You know these are all like three months overdue,” Jared comments, rooting through the bag of movie rentals.

Jensen shrugs and folds himself into the corner seat of the sofa, leaning so he can peer over Jared’s shoulder and see if maybe he can catch a hint if Jared approves of his movies.

“Ha,” Jared chuffs and holds up _The Princess Bride._ “Classic.”

“Yeah?” Jensen perks.

“Oh yeah.” Jared scoffs. “Please, it’s so quotable I’m pretty sure it might be a cardinal sin not to understand when someone shouts ‘Inconceivable!’” Jensen chuckles and Jared sifts through the last of the movies before craning his head up at Jensen. “Anything else?”

Jensen points towards the shelves and a shoddily taped box stuffed into a corner on the lowest one that reads ‘MOVIES N SHIT’ in sloppy sharpie on the side. “Anything we have would be in there.”

Jared grumbles under his breath at the distance between him and the box before rolling to his feet and dragging it out with considerable effort.

He still doesn’t have a real hang of calling up pieces of the wolf on command so it takes Jared a few moments of fixating completely on his hand with his knees braced strangely into the floor for the beds of his nails to blacken up.

“Breathe through it,” Jensen coaches as he observes with his chin laying over his folded hands and Jared lets out the breath that he was holding explosively and the claws twist out of him.

“Ow, shit,” Jared hisses and shakes out his hand before slicing through the tape keeping the box sealed tight with one smooth, continuous draw of sleek nails and tense muscle. The claws recede easily, like butter melting. The box flays open under his blunt fingertips and Jared starts to sort, pulling out small stacks of DVDs and free floating discs. “It’s mostly CDs, man,” he calls over his shoulder.

“Sorry.” Jensen frowns.

Jared is turned away from him but Jensen can see the eye roll telegraph through his shoulders.  “It’s not your fault, don’t be sorry.”

“Sorry.”

“Oh!” Jared gasps, abrupt and ecstatic, startling Jensen upright. “Oh my god!”

“What?” Jensen eases up on his feet, padding forward toward the frenzy of sudden movement that is Jared prying a disc out of a case. He scrambles upright and slaps Jensen in the chest with the casing as he practically sprints to the player.

The case has the saturated image of a muzzled, masked man in a padded room struggling against the restraint of a straitjacket.

_Quiet Riot._

“I’ve never heard of them,” Jensen comments idly, flipping the case over and reading the song list. The whole set up of the colors and font feels classic eighties to Jensen and he figures the disc might have been Jeff’s once up on a time.

“My brother used to listen to them all the time,” Jared chatters over his shoulder as he fiddles with the volume from his knees. “He had this big thing for hair rock.”

The music starts with sharp percussion and a screaming man before Jensen can add anything more, bursting into the room with such a sudden intensity and escalated volume that Jared winces bodily but refuses to turn it down, smiling brightly even as he covers his ears.

“Isn’t it great?” he shouts to be heard.

There’s a sound like thunder rising up from the basement, catching them by surprise. Someone isn’t just coming up the stairs, they’re _sprinting,_ and Jensen registers a half a second too late that if the CDs aren’t Jeff’s then they are absolutely, without a doubt, Mark’s.

Mark, the kid who used to huff, “Tattle tale,” and, “Daddy’s little bitch,” under his breath whenever Jensen would thwart their plans to get into trouble in their youth. The boy who once punched Casey right in the dick for rearranging his rock collection without his express permission. Mark; the borderline sociopath that last year was nearly arrested for armed robbery but got off on the technicality that he wasn’t actually armed, just that the cashier was mostly blind and he could hold his fingers menacingly, and he didn’t actually walk away with any money - leading Jensen to firmly believe that he did it just to see if he could.

Before Jensen can even begin to spit out a proper blue streak and lunge bodily for the player to turn the music off the basement door is kicked open from the inside, slamming so hard into the wall that the plaster cracks audibly and the pictures jump.

“Jesus!” Jared startles and whips around to see Mark standing in the doorway, chest heaving, eyes manic.

“I,” Mark exhales harshly, nostrils flaring as he pants with his chest, “ _fucking love this song._ ”

Jared lights up.

“Come on feel the noise!” Mark screams with the lyrics, face contorting as he really leans into the words, knees bowing and hands clenching into the air as if the song’s inside of him, tearing out through his mouth.

“Girls rock your boys!” Jared matches him volume and intensity, pointing across the room to Mark like he’s calling him out and Jensen feels like he’s missed something, afternoon suddenly tail-spinning out of his control.

They scream along – _Wild! Wild! Wild!-_ because what they’re doing barely counts as speaking let alone singing; laughing and air guitaring and head banging so hard Jared’s hair slings back and forth and Jensen laughs until his eyes water. Jared tugs him up off the couch, shouting, “Come on!” and the lyrics are repetitive enough that Jensen can scream along, to Mark and Jared’s absolute delight.

“I get next one!” Mark crows, breathless and eyes lit up bright with the music and the company and someone willing to be just as asshole obnoxious as he is about it and Jared laughs. He hits his knees next to the box and starts flinging discs around, searching for the perfect one.

“Hell yeah!” Jared hollers back once Mark holds up a _Manfred Mann’s Earth Band_ CD above his head reverently.

Jensen doesn’t know how long he spends doubled over on the couch, clutching his sides while watching Jared and Mark stumble their way through lyrics they only half know – _With a boulder on his shoulder, feeling kinda older-_ but it feels like forever. An eternity in a moment of watching two boys who barely knew each other ten minutes ago bond so wholly in the course of two songs, posturing and dancing and holding each other upright when they’re laughing too hard to do it themselves and Jensen forgot that it really is that easy.

They’re in the middle of trying to explain that the chorus is “revved up like a deuce” and not something else horrible to Jensen when Danneel flits in, bypasses all of them with her nose high up in the air as she makes a beeline for the player and the music cuts off abruptly.

“Danni, what the fuck?” Mark snaps and she flashes her middle finger over her shoulder at him as she digs through the box deftly, swapping out the disc with a smug little grin and setting the track before twisting to stand upright with her arms extended, awaiting praise.

It’s a few seconds before the songs really kicks in, Danneel standing with arms wide open, grinning brightly as they all wait, amused and expectant.

And then the piano kicks in and they’re all howling laughter, Danneel laughing so hard she snorts into her palm and Jared burying his face into Jensen’s neck and holding onto his shoulder for support.

_I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand walking through the streets of Soho in the rain!_

They all howl along – _Aahoo! Werewolves of London!-_ and Danneel shouts, “Yeah! C’mon, I’m awesome!” at Mark and all their singing and howling and laughing brings others. It’s Gen and Adrianne first, looking for Danneel but staying once they get swept up in wanting to be a part of the laughter and the familiarity. And then Seb, barreling in and declaring that no one is allowed to have a party without inviting him. – _Aahoo! Werewolves of London!-_ and everyone is _screaming,_ howling, touching, laughing and Jensen hasn’t felt so in tune with them, any of them, since he was fifteen. They reach out for Jared when they sing _–And his hair was perfect!-_ and he ducks behind Jensen’s shoulder, hot breath exploding down Jensen’s collar as he pants and cackles, and Chris and Mike come ambling in, demanding to know what the fresh hell is going on in here and diving right in to teasing at Jared’s hair, respectively.

The song ends and they’re all breathless, wheezing, half collapsed on the floor and Jensen feels like he could fly, Jared mostly laying on top of him, weight crushing Jensen’s lungs and pressing the scar-dead part of his back so hard into the arm of the sofa he can feel it, red-faced and struggling for dry gasps of air with laughing too hard for too long.

Alona’s in the doorway, beaming.

-

Misha comes and with him comes the largest, cheapest bottle of tequila Jensen has ever seen in his life and suddenly they’re real teenagers doing real, dumb teenager shit like taking shots out of mismatched glasses with every single lime they have in the house sliced and spread out over the coffee table in a small sprinkled sea of table salt.

And, of course, shots turn into drinking games and when none of them can actually keep up with drinking to every ‘monkey’ in _Brass Monkey_ –Chris coughs tequila up his nose and Jared turns the brightest color of red Jensen has ever seen in his life just trying- Sebastian declares that they’re playing Never Have I Ever.

“Me first!” Danneel grabs for the bottle and demands everyone sit, filling glasses and passing them around.

Jensen ends up on the corner of the table with the edge of the wood digging into his stomach. Jared’s on the other corner and it might be the farthest they’ve ever been apart with other people in the room but Genevieve had insisted that Jensen was being a big, fat, stupid Jared hog and everyone else deserved some fledgling time too.

Their eyes catch and Jared grins at him.

Jensen has a brief moment to wonder when the last time Jared was a part of something this big, this close, this pack-oriented before a shot is being pressed into his hand and Danneel’s calling for their attention again.

“Okay, let’s start easy,” she starts, tucking tawny hair behind her hair. The music is still going in the background, but it’s nothing that Jensen recognizes. “Never have I ever kissed a girl.”

The boys all groan and Seb demands, “One shot for each girl, or?”

Jensen hesitates until he sees Jared slam one back -eyes squeezing shut tight as he presses the lime to his lips and sucks so hard his cheeks hollow out- before tipping his head back and letting the burn of alcohol rush down his throat and hit his empty stomach hard.

“Alona, you’re next, go!” Danneel pokes at Alona’s shoulder.

“Oh, uh,” Alona stalls. “Never have I ever…” She licks her lips and screws her face up and thinks about it hard. “Never have I ever run naked through public.”

“That was one fucking time!” Matt snaps and then he and Sebastian drink.

“I have a feeling like I’m going to lose this game,” Sebastian mutters, shaking his head to clear the burn from his sinuses.

“Wait,” Jared interrupts, laughing. “What? What happened?”

“It was a dare,” Sebastian bemoans.

“Yeah, that Mark totally pussied out on!” Matt narrows his eyes and Mark raises his hands up and scoffs on an eye roll.

The game starts out pretty tame with everyone picking on Sebastian with ‘never have I ever tried to kiss a goat,’ ‘never have I ever been caught with the sheriff’s daughter wearing nothing but a sailor hat and a lei on the fourth of July,’ ‘never have I ever thought it was a good idea to try and climb up a mountain through a waterfall,’ and Sebastian curses them between shots, going quickly red in the face as everyone laughs at his agony. Jared stops them all and demands explanations, wincing sympathetically as Katie cackles her way through the story of how the goat head-butted Seb in the stomach so hard that his appendix burst and Jensen has to sit back and wonder at how Sebastian made it past puberty.

“Fuckers,” Sebastian grouses as they all laugh at his expense, but he’s grinning, bursting with pride at being regaled by his own conquests. “My turn. Never have I ever sucked a dick.”

“Gross!” Gen throws a lime rind at him. “Call it a blow job; don’t be icky, Seb.”

Sebastian rolls his eyes and then reiterates sarcastically: “Alright, sorry. Never have I ever given a down and dirty, cock sucking, deep throating blow job.” He ducks under his arms as he’s showered with used limes and pelted with handfuls of stray salt. “Don’t you assholes tell me no one at this table has sucked a cock!”

 Adrianne snorts under her breath and downs the small glass of alcohol, hissing and tossing her head in a tumble of long curls after and everyone choruses an ‘oooooh’ and Jensen’s clapping out a laugh when he catches movement out of the corner of his eye.

Jared’s far beyond flinching at the burn of tequila by now, he can just throw back his head, open up his neck and his throat and let it drop straight from his teeth to his stomach without so much as a shudder, dulled to it.

The laughter of the room fades out.

Jensen can’t quite explain the cold sweat that breaks out over the back of his neck as he watches the pink of Jared’s lips stick to the edge of the stunted glass when he pulls it away. It _clack_ s against the hardwood of the coffee table and the only sound in the room is the dull thrum of _Stairway to Heaven_ in the background.

“No way!”

Chris said it, Jensen thinks, but he can’t be sure because he can’t hear a thing outside of the rush of blood to his ears and the breathy “ _Ah,_ ” Jared heaves after swallowing, wiping his mouth with his forearm and leveling a challenging stare around the circle.

“I think it’s story time!” Adrianne elects, over enunciating to compensate for the numbness of her tongue as she points Jared out a little sloppily. “You. Go. Explain. Now.”

Jared snorts a slurred laugh –a giggle, really- into his hand, obviously more than halfway to completely toasted or he wouldn’t have taken the shot in the first place. His fingers look pale against the flush red of his cheeks and his glossy eyes are dancing as he tries to pull himself together enough to crisp out: “A lady never blows and tells.”

Everyone bursts into uproarious laughter except Jensen, Adrianne hopping on her knees as she fans her face for air, Seb listlessly clinging to Danneel’s shoulder as she wipes tears from her eyes, Alona covering her mouth and her rosy cheeks.

Jensen can’t remember how to laugh. He can barely remember how to breathe.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Matt wheezes. “Was this just a thing? Or is it, like, a _thing?”_

Jared just winks.

Jensen knew this.

Jensen thinks he knew this.

This isn’t strictly new information.

But this is so much different from overhearing Jared’s uncle calling him some derogatory name that could be all insult and no circumstance and this isn’t Jensen watching Jared’s face while they’re watching a movie this- Jared openly drinking to blowing someone –some nameless, faceless person Jensen doesn’t even know, can’t even imagine – this is so fucking different. Jared did that- Jared let someone- Jared-

“Jensen!” Mark shouts right into his ear and Jensen startles so hard he nearly knocks his own drink over. “It’s your turn, come on!”

“Right,” Jensen shakes himself, tequila sloshing heavily through his head and clouding up all of his senses. “Uh… Never have I ever,” been beaten by my uncle, slept in a car, worked two jobs because no one was taking care of me, bought the idiot kid who sat next to me in English class a candle, “fucked a guy.”

He doesn’t know what makes him say it or why he’s staring at Jared when he does.

The noise falls back out of the room.

Maybe a couple of girls take hesitant little sips of their drinks but Jensen doesn’t see them and they aren’t even thoughts in his head, and they’re all watching Jared anyway because he’s the only person in the room that they don’t know everything about.

“Fucked one?” Jared repeats and makes a show of stroking his chin thoughtfully as he looks Jensen over for some sort of tell, but Jensen’s entire body is a tell right now, from the sweat in his hairline to the shaking of his hands. Jared grins slowly, smoldering. “No.”

Something Jensen didn’t even realize was clenched up tight in his chest eases.

“Been fucked by, though?” Jared slams back the drink, tongue spiraling deep into the shallow glass to lick the liquor from the basin, folding over on itself red and wet and then the laughter is back, echoing harshly in Jensen’s ears. It feels suddenly like they’re laughing at him, right in his face.

By the time Jensen realizes his hands are clenched and his claws are burrowing into his own palms he thinks he’s had too much to drink.

There’s a general upheaval of discontent when Jensen hauls himself unsteadily to his feet, staggering and bracing his hands against the coffee table for a few moments while his body readjusts to the altitude.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Sebastian demands with a muddled mouth, squinting harshly like he can’t see clearly.

“I think I’ve had enough,” Jensen dismisses pretty coolly for a kid with such a hot face.

“Bed time?” Jared leans forward, elbows pressed forward so far onto the table that the edge is jammed up into his armpits, cheeks squashed into his palms.

“For me,” Jensen clarifies. “You can stay if you want.”

Honestly, a little time apart would probably do them some good. Jensen has his head so full of Jared, too full of Jared, and he can’t feel it leading anywhere good unless he gets some fresh air in his lungs to distill it a bit.

Wolves are territorial by nature. Werewolves doubly so.

Jared isn’t his.

Letting himself believe any differently is a mistake.

“Nah,” Jared grins dismissively and uses Gen’s shoulder and the coffee table to hoist himself upright. “I’ll come too.”

He stumbles when he tries to walk and Jensen waits until Jared teeters and ‘good-bye’s his way around the table begrudgingly.

When Jared slings an arm over his shoulder Jensen nearly topples over under their combined weight and it takes a few floundering moments to get the hang of balancing between the two of them.

There’s a general grumbling of disgruntlement behind them as Jared gives one last sloppy megawatt grin over his shoulder and Jensen tries to coordinate his feet one in front of the other without getting distracted by the citrus and alcohol smell of Jared’s breath flooding over him.

They conquer the stairs one step at a time, Jensen taking the major lead in coordinating their mess of limbs that are too long and have too many uncontrollable joints as the pleasant warmth of Jared seeps into his side through his clothes and penetrates deep into muscle and bones, soaking through to the marrow of him and Jensen wants to hate it.  He wants to push Jared away, flash his teeth and growl until the other boy is running the other way with a better idea of what Jensen’s capable of.

He should be running, Jensen thinks as Jared’s head lolls onto his shoulder. He should have been running for a long time now, but that –the thing- what Jared said, admitted to- it changes things. It changes what Jensen can’t get away with, what he’s too afraid to try, adds mountains to the lists of thing he’ll never dare to do.

But then Jared’s humming, “Hey, Jensen,” into his ear and the last thing in the whole world Jensen wants to do is push him away again.

“Yeah?” Jensen coughs up, throat tight.

“That was really fun.” He can feel the edge of Jared’s smile pressed into the back of his neck when he shuffles them in through the door to his bedroom and kicks it shut behind them. “I like them.”

It’s the first time Jared’s said anything vaguely akin to feeling something other than disdain and fear for the pack and Jensen’s heart seizes up slightly in his chest.

Too much.

Too much for one night.

“They’re pretty okay,” Jensen concedes pithily as he shoves Jared at the bed and thankfully hits his target. Jared hits the mattress with a bounce and a laugh and Jensen crawls in after him, suddenly and absolutely drained.

There’s some kicking and grumbling and repositioning like always that ends with Jensen on his stomach with one arm slung across Jared’s chest and their legs tangled, denim scraping.

Jensen feels overheated, a little sweaty but he buries his nose deeper into Jared’s shoulder, letting the sweet scent of hot skin and fabric softener soothe the raw spots inside his chest before he closes his eyes.

There’s a hitch in the chest underneath his arm right before Jared mumbles, “You know, I actually really like it here,” sleepy and distorted through a yawn.

Jensen rolls his eyes behind his eyelids, his blood a messy swamp of tequila and Jared. “Anywhere’s better than your uncle’s house.” He burrows deeper into Jared’s side, wriggling and jostling in the hunt for comfort until he finally settles again, only fractionally readjusted but still wholly exhausted.

Jared is still underneath him. “What?”

“What?” Jensen mutters blearily, lips smearing into the seam of Jared’s t-shirt as he battles muted irritation that Jared’s dragging this out.

“What did you just say?” Jared breathes, confused and distressed right in Jensen’s ear and Jensen scrapes together the energy to review whatever just came out of his mouth just to see if he can put this to bed so that Jared will just stop talking and he can finally get some sleep.

There’s a half a second of disconnect before Jensen’s eyes split open.

“Oh…my god.”

Jensen is up like a shot and rolling out of bed before Jared can really start to piece anything together wholly, brain too mucked up to put together any coherent response other than, “Don’t freak out,” but he is the farthest thing away from sleepy now, heart pumping, eyes watering, hands braced out in the air in front of him. “Just, don’t freak out, okay?”

“Don’t freak out?” Jared barks, lips pulling tight against the words and Jensen can see through the dark of the night that Jared’s eyes are shifting yellow. “What the fuck are you talking about? How did you know about—”

The sentence drops midair and Jensen backs himself up into the wall, breathing choppy and curling in on himself. His hands tremble as he curls them around his own stomach.

“No.” Jared shakes his head, slow at first and then building momentum until he’s clutching at his temples and pulling at his hair. “Please tell me that you didn’t-,” he starts helplessly before a small stroke of realization hits him full in the face, scrambling up his expression into disbelief. “Oh my god, the fucking dog- the dog, that was- that was you? Jensen?”

Jared doesn’t need more confirmation than his silence.

“You knew.” It’s a statement, not a question, fallen from Jared’s trembling lips. He pieces it all together, puts together all the implications that if Jensen was the dog that Jared dragged home that did nothing when he was watching Jared being brutally beaten then Jensen was still the boy at school the next day that said and did nothing outside of sharing a bag of M&Ms and Jensen was the boy that lived every moment fully aware and let Jared tell lies while he knew, knew explicitly.

Jared covers his slack mouth with his long fingers and comprehends fully what and who Jensen is.

A coward. A fool. A waste of time and space.

Jensen doesn’t have to flash his teeth at all.

“Sorry.” The word is broken by the spasming of his throat where the sobs are building. He mumbles it to floor because he knows it doesn’t matter, but he wants it said.

And it’s not a sorry for not acting and it’s a not a sorry for not telling and it’s not a sorry for any single thing in particular: it’s just a sorry for himself. Sorry that he exists. Jensen apologizing for Jensen, because it needs to be said.

“Don’t. No,” Jared barks, voice short and abrupt with the harsh pulls of air he takes in as he shakes his head and tugs hard at his hair. His breaths are coming severe and choppy, too much to drink and too much to think about together and he’s coping badly. “Shut up, just shut up for one minute I need to- I can’t-” He growls and shakes his head out.

The window sounds like a riot when Jared muscles it open and scrambles out.

Jensen doesn’t even look up.

-

Jensen doesn’t look for Jared. Jensen doesn’t bother Jared. Jensen gives Jared all the space and time in the world.

He sits on the floor in his bedroom and pulls out every candle he owns and lights them all up, basks in their heat and light until he’s sweating and then caps them one by one, watching the flames dim, cavern of glass clouding with smoke until the light fades and they snuff themselves out for hours and hours.

The Man Town candle is nearly burned down to nothing and Jensen cups his hands over it, scalding glass curving the outer edge of his palms as he closes his hands tight over the lid. The flame burns and blisters his fingers and he hisses but presses down harder until the candle seals and the small fire burns itself out.

His hands smells like smoke. His hands always smell like smoke.

-

The sun is just beginning to think about breaking the horizon when he hears it outside of his window. A light scratching, like someone just itching along the textured roofing tiles because Jared isn’t going to come to him and certainly isn’t going to call him out, so Jensen goes to him. He slips out of the window feet first and climbs up the narrow strip of the roof towards the main slope, bare feet rubbing raw against the rough sheets, and Jared’s there, sitting with his knees drawn up to his chest staring off into the horizon and dragging a single clawed finger across the roof.

Jensen sits far off to the side, giving Jared as much space as he can while still edging as close as he dares.

Jensen hasn’t slept and he knows Jared hasn’t either.

Jared is framed in pink and grey clouds, profile lit up by the early morning sun beams.

“I’m not mad,” Jared says calmly.

Jensen doesn’t believe him, so he says nothing.

They sit in silence long enough that the true yellows start to bleed into the sky before Jared starts to talk.

“His name was Milo.” Jared’s voice is even and his face is impassive, even in profile. “I knew I didn’t love him, but I think I could have. I liked him. He was fun and he had a nice smile and, I don’t know, I liked being around him. He made me happy and I was just a kid. It was six months ago and I was just a kid.”

He sighs and leans his forehead down into his palm, scrubbing at the lines of his brow.

“I don’t blame him for anything. Never did. It’s not his fault. I’m glad he got out of the way. And I should have known better, never even let him try to start talking me into blowing him while my parents were out. We’d been fooling around for a while and, I mean, where else in the whole state of Texas was I going to find somebody else who wanted to experiment, you know? We weren’t dating. I don’t think we were dating, anyway. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that his dick was in my mouth when my mother came home from the grocery store. They both freaked out and he splits before she can really get going, throwing things, telling me that I was going to Hell, that I was a freak, that I wasn’t her son anymore. She tells me to go to my room and wait for my dad to get home and I’m losing it, right? But I think, no, they’re my parents, they _love_ me. I just caught her by surprise, s’all. As soon as she gets a second to calm down and think about it, about me, and how I’m still the same brat she had to walk to preschool because I was too afraid to let go of her hand—”his voice cracks up and he clears his throat.

Jensen feels cold.

Jared clears his throat again and coughs before rolling his head back on his neck and exhaling out a cloudy sigh into the air. “It didn’t quite work out like that.”

Jensen’s eyes slip closed and his face crumples.

“My dad gets home and I’m listening at the door as my mother explains that they’ve raised _a sinner_ for a son. Unnatural. And I expect my dad to say something, you know? But there’s just silence. Nothing. And my dad’s a big guy, right, but I’ve never been afraid of him before because he’s always been real calm with us, barely ever raised his voice, never hit us or anything. I hear him coming down the hall and I’ve never been more afraid of anything else before in my entire life. He’s going to kill me, that’s it, the end. My obituary’s gonna be, ‘Well, he was a fag anyway.’ So I stand in the middle of the room and I’m not even really sure what I was thinking except that there is no way I’m going to put myself in a corner for this. I’m not sorry I like boys, I’m not going to apologize to him, and I sure as hell ain’t gonna apologize to his fist. Fuck _that._ ” He laughs a bitter bark of a sound, but there’s steel in it.

“It was stupid anyway because he comes in and he’s calm, calm as I’ve ever seen him and he says, ‘Son, we need to talk.’” Jared rolls his eyes. “So I go out into the kitchen and we sit down at the table like we’re going to have a civil conversation and my mother won’t even look at me and my dad turns to me and says, ‘Your mother tells me that you’ve been up to some unsavory activities.’ Unsavory activities, he actually said that. And then he tries to tell me that there’s things that can be done for ‘people like me,’” he sneers. “Tells me he knows a guy whose brother runs a camp for ‘confused individuals.’ Says they’ll let me come home for Christmas and I’m not allowed electronics so I can write. Like gay rehab.” He shrugs. “So I told him that I wasn’t going to any camp because there was nothing wrong with me and – _pow.”_

Jensen’s eyes burn. He doesn’t want to hear this, doesn’t want to know.

“So my kid sister,” Jared forges ahead, voice and face completely detached from the story. “Megan, I guess she’d been listening in the whole time, and hears me hit the ground and she starts _screaming_. Shit, it was the worst thing. My mom’s crying, my dad’s yelling, and she just keeps going and going and I know somebody’s bound call the police sooner or later and if I didn’t want to deal with my parents finding out I like dick I sure as shit don’t want the cops around there to know. So I run back to my room, lock the door, and open the window. I got as much stuff as I could into the trunk of my car and I got myself the hell out of there. I remember my mother’s got a piece of shit for a brother that nobody ever talks to anymore because he sucks, but when I was a kid Uncle Ben always had a bit of a soft spot for me. So I head up to Vermont, show up on his doorstep, explain the whole thing and he’s too drunk to care if I crash on his couch.”

The sun appears first as yellow slivers of purity in the distance, bringing the subtlety of colors one inch of sky at a time. Not just silver and shadows for the animals that prowl, Moon’s brother brings the true colors of the world for the beasts who make life.

“The first time he ever hit me was because I left some dishes out. He leaves shit out all the time I didn’t think he’d mind if I let them wait until after I got back from meeting with the principal because I was running late and, uh… I mean, I guess I was wrong.” He shrugs again, still staring out into the break of light among the trees. He voice has reached the lyrical cadence of storytelling, low and rumbling and soothing.

“For a while there I stayed because I needed a place to sleep more than I didn’t like being hit. I’d never been punched before in my life and then suddenly it was a routine. Called me piece of shit, useless, worthless, the typical stuff but I didn’t really care. He was just some guy I had to live with when I wasn’t at school or working, his opinion about what I was or wasn’t didn’t mean shit to me. I was going to be there for, what? Four months? Five? I could take a fist or two for five months and then I was out of there, graduated and on my own. First time he took a belt to me, though, was because I brought a dog home.”

He looks to Jensen for the first time and Jensen nearly startles.

“I guess you know that part already.” Jared stares until Jensen looks away, flushing with shame.

“After that I decided I didn’t need a place to sleep more than I didn’t like getting hit, so I left. Slept in my car, showered at the community center, ate leftovers at work. It wasn’t ideal but whatever: same deal with Ben. I can sleep in the back of a car until I’m done with high school, it’s not a big deal. But you know,” he puts his hands up and makes a ‘what can you do’ expression, “I had to go and get bitten by a werewolf.”

Jensen flinches.

“But I’m not angry, Jensen.” Jared leans back onto his hands and his hair catches in the sunshine, golden brown.

“You’re… not?” Jensen feels strangely empty.

“Nah,” Jared shrugs. “Hell, I’m glad you got out of there when you did. I didn’t want you getting into it with Ben, somebody would have ended up hurt. And then what were you going to say about it later? I get it.”

“You’re not angry?” Jensen repeats.

“Not at all,” Jared grins. “What I am is disappointed, Jensen.”

Jensen licks his lips and curls his shoulders.

“I’m disappointed that you didn’t help me, but more than that I’m disappointed that you didn’t do it because you were afraid,” he says simply. “You’re afraid of people, you’re afraid of responsibility, you’re afraid of caring, and you’re terrified that you want to kiss me. You’re afraid of everything and you don’t even care, you don’t want to change. Something terrible happened, you tried to take control of a situation and it backfired so you gave up. But fuck you, Jensen,” he laughs, bright and terrible. “Bad things happen. You take them in, you make them a part of you, and then you keep fucking going, or you’re dead.”

Jared draws himself up to his feet and Jensen has to angle his head back on his neck and look up. Jared breathes in deeply as he stares out at the sunrise and smiles, squinting off into the distance.

“I don’t have time for people who are always scared.”

He walks past Jensen and he doesn’t look back.

-

Jared doesn’t look at him for three days.

Jensen keeps trail behind him in the halls because they’re going to the same places but he gives Jared space, only drawing closer when Jared starts looking overwhelmed because, if anything, pulling away from Jensen gives him something other than the onslaught of smells and sounds to focus on.

He loses Jared after school and spends fifteen minutes fretting it over in the parking lot, wondering if Jared’s getting himself in trouble somewhere, if he’s left entirely because his car is gone, if he’s going to get them both into such a mess that he can’t save either of their asses from the wrath of his father this time around. He settles on shuffling back to the house alone because he can worry in the lot or he can worry in the kitchen, it’s all still worrying.

The Maverick isn’t in the driveway.

He thinks maybe if it comes down to blows he’ll be able to shoulder both of their punishments if he can get his father angry enough. Maybe if he mentions his mother Alpha will focus on him long enough for someone, probably Alona, to get Jared away.

It would break everyone apart, shatter the pack right down the middle and there would be a reawakening that Jensen can’t even fathom if Alpha killed him, but Jensen can’t bring himself to care that far into the future.

There is an image in his head of the old punishments, when they would drag the guilty deep into the forest under Moon’s light, find some still water and wade out into Her reflection before slitting the throat and purging the pack and Jensen can imagine that his death will be nothing like that if Jared breaks law. It will be quick and messy at the hands and teeth of the man who Jensen used to believe could shift the very laws of nature to gift life.

Jensen worries himself nauseous for an hour before Jared kicks open the door to Jensen’s room - not out of anger, but because his arms are too full to manage the task on his own. Jensen startles off the bed when the door crashes into the wall and Jared backs in with his arms full of a mass of synthetic fabric that smells of cedar chips and the stringy fibers of cotton stuffing.

Jared drops the dog bed in the corner that Jensen slept in the night he slept on the floor, the farthest from the bed before struggling with a plastic bag with the logo of the pet store in the next town over printed on the side.

The bowl clatters to the ground with a loud metallic _ping_ that reverberates hollowly around the room as it wobbles the circumference of the base, teetering on the bottom edge in the hunt for the center of gravity until it finally falls with another tinny resonation and Jensen can read the engraving on the side.

_Jared._

Jared hums appreciatively to himself, inspecting the corner before nodding once and walking out again without sparing Jensen a glance.

Jensen sits slowly on the floor and nods silently, lips pressed tight, eyes burning. He deserves this.


	13. Chapter 13

  
Jensen drags his feet through the gravel down Main Street on the way home because Jared had slipped him again and he takes the time to not think. The cold curls all around him, even in the sun, and Jensen is alone all the way up to the front door of the house he’s lived in for two whole years.

He wonders if he wishes he never met Jared as he opens the front door and lets himself in.

“Mr. Jared, _please,”_ Nikki’s begging, weighing Jared down by dragging on his hands and Jared is trying to disengage but Jenna is clinging to his leg because they know that if they’re just pathetic and persistent enough they’ll always get what they want.

“Just one story!” Jenna pulls at his jeans imploringly. “It can be a short one! You can choose!”

“Please!” Nikki implores, smiling a wide, gap toothed smile beseechingly.

Jensen watches Jared’s face start to crack up under their mutual assault and Jensen feels like a tin soldier put back in the box, returned to the shelf to be obsolete elsewhere. His breath catches in his throat, choking him and if ever he were to dissolve out, the matter of him flaking away from the whole and turning back to the dust, now would be it.

He spreads his hands open and wills that disintegration to commence.

Either the sound or the movement, however subtle they were, must have caught Jared’s attention because he’s glancing Jensen’s way and saying, “Wait, hey, wouldn’t you like it better if Mr. Jensen read you something?”

“Jesen! Jesen!” They plow into his knees with such a force that Jensen stumbles under the onslaught.

“Read to us, Jesen!” Nikki pleads, face gone blotchy like she’s seconds away from throwing a tantrum.

“One story! Please,” Jenna begs, nearly throwing herself to her knees at Jensen’s feet.

Jensen lets himself be washed away in a tide of childish enthusiasm and once they see that he’ll come willingly Nikki’s back to yanking on Jared’s shirttails, demanding, “C’mon,” with a long, long vowel sound in a high tone. “It’s story time!” she says, like it should mean the same thing to Jared that it does to her.

Jared is reluctant but in the end he concedes the battle and Jensen’s just glad Jared’s dislike –not dislike, disappointment- of him isn’t going to affect the children, who have taken to him like fish to water. They’d be crushed if Jared pulled away from them, too.

Jensen is jammed between the beds again, Nikki and Jenna on his left and Jared cross-legged with Robby in his lap like a shield on his right.

“Can you read the wild one?” Robby asks into his own palm.

“Yeah!” Jenna bursts and the next thing Jensen knows the hard cover of a thin book is being slapped into his chest, sharp corner jabbing hard into the inner part of his arm. “It’s short, just like we said! We promised, now read!”

Jensen lets the book fall flat onto his thighs and runs his palm flush over the cover before cracking the thin spine and clearing his tight throat, feeling so absurdly hyperaware of Jared’s presence that it’s like the compass of him is honed due-Jared, buzzing under his skin and pointing him in that direction. But he ignores it, ignores it like he ignores everything else because he’s such a sad sack of _disappointment_ and clears his throat again.

“Where the Wild Things Are,” Jensen begins, turning over the first page. “The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind,” thick fingers turning thin pages, “And another, his mother called him ‘WILD THING!’”

Jared is breathing steadily, arms wound tight around Robby in his lap as he listens to the story, gasping in all the right places and nudging Robby to coax him into interacting as Max sails across the seas until he finds where the wild things are.

“Let the wild rumpus start!” Robby echoes the book and smiles softly with two missing front teeth, looking down at where his little hands are pressed flat into Jared’s larger ones like it’s the most amazing thing he’s ever seen in his whole entire life while Nikki and Jenna clamber over his shoulders to see the pictures. Jared’s lips curve gently and Max misses home, decides to leave the wild things because he wants to be somewhere where someone loves him best.

“Please don’t go,” Jensen’s voice cracks and Jared looks up, smile fading. “We’ll eat you up we love you so.”

Their eyes get caught and Jensen licks his dry lips.

“You’re not doing the voices right,” Jenna complains. “Jensen, you have to do the voices!”

-

Jensen’s exhausted all over, his body feels like one big bruise and he wishes that he trusted anyone else enough to watch Jared for him during the school day because there is nothing more in this entire world he would like than to go home now, away from the snide whispers of people who don’t know him and don’t particularly like him, and crawl into a chair or a couch or a nice patch of soft floor somewhere and pass out for a few thousand years. He can’t go back to his bed when that stupid dog pillow is still stuffed in the corner. Jensen has no idea if Jared’s actually slept on it because that would require him actually sticking around after dinner instead of crawling out the window and getting a few fitful hours of sleep in the grass under the trellis. If Jared ever looked out the window he would probably be able to see Jensen.

Jensen isn’t sure of much, but he’s sure Jared hasn’t looked out the window.

His hips ache from so much time spent on the ground over the past week and he soaks it in with every step he takes because, honestly, he deserves more.

Jared should hit him, he decides somewhere between sitting in the back of third period alone and eating lunch by himself at the extreme end of Jared’s table, enough space and people in between them that no one would ever think that they were in any way affiliated, even though the Murray kid glares over at him at every given opportunity. Just punch him right in the face, maybe break his nose or something and they could both start feeling a little better.

Jensen rubs at his swollen eyes and imagines the sound his cheekbone would make fracturing under Jared’s knuckles and feels a little better for a few short seconds before he remembers that Jared isn’t _angry_ with him, he’s just _done_ with him.

He walks home alone again.

-

There are little rebellions at first.

Jared leaving for school a few minutes before Jensen, cutting classes without telling Jensen where he’s going to be, and Jensen doesn’t know if Jared just doesn’t comprehend that he’s playing with their lives or if he’s waiting for Jensen to step up and tell him to cut that shit out.

When they’re walking Chris gets an odd look on his face and asks Jensen where his boy is and Jensen doesn’t know.

Jared doesn’t come right back to the house after school, and when he does come in through the front door it’s with a bright grin and a steaming cup of coffee from the shop two towns over or a foil-wrapped burrito from the only Mexican restaurant within fifty miles.

There are glances in Jensen’s direction from everyone who catches Jared out and about, expectant like they’re waiting for Jensen to intervene but it’s Jared’s life and Jared’s choices and Jensen’s just tied to it, he certainly doesn’t get any input anymore.

This, though; this is far beyond a small rebellion.

“What are you wearing?” Danneel laughs, pointing her fork in Jared’s direction and Jensen looks up sharply from his half-chewed sandwich. Saturdays have never followed the rigidity of sanctioned meal times in Jensen’s memory and this Saturday isn’t much different, too late for lunch but too early for dinner. If the sun weren’t coated in stale cotton candy grey clouds it would have barely begun to set, meaning that it has been seven hours since the last time Jensen saw Jared.

“You like?” Jared asks, turning once and striking a dramatic pose with his hip popped and his arms out that makes everyone except Jensen laugh.

Jared’s only ever worn baggy, threadbare jeans and oversized sweatshirts that were all geared for comfort rather than show, which makes sense because Jared’s entire life is honed toward comfort and style isn’t a big to-do. The black jeans he’s wearing aren’t anything Jensen pulled out of his trunk and he would have remembered if he’d seen Jared wear them before. The pants are straight legged, and they cling like they’re wet, showing off how narrow Jared is all over. The Chuck Taylors are brand new, bleach white and pristine black and the navy blue button-up is only really buttoned to the collar of his undershirt, flashes of white when he moves and the sleeves are rolled up to his elbows so he looks almost like those old fashioned greasers when he slicks his hair back out of his face.

“Very sharp,” Patrick comments, smiling in his small, superior way that detracts marginally from the sincerity of everything he says, but he toasts his glass in Jared’s direction and Jared grins.

“You going somewhere?” Gen asks.

“Yup.” Jared pops the ‘p’ and helps himself to an apple. “Alaina’s parents are out of town because her aunt’s having a baby or something, so she’s throwing this huge party.”

“Oh.” Alona sits back, stunned. “And you’re… going?”

“Yeah,” Jared says, underlying ‘duh’ in his tone.

“Oh,” Chris repeats and glances out the window.

Full Moon is tomorrow night. Jared’s first Full Moon.

“Is that…” Patrick starts awkwardly, trying to be proper and not offend by implying that Jared wouldn’t be able to take care of himself, just that he’s still new to all of this. “Is that the best idea?”

“Jensen said I could,” Jared says, chipper as he sinks his teeth into the apple with a crisp crunch.

All eyes are on Jensen.

“Uh…” Jensen stammers and Jared stares at him, challenge written in every line of his body. “I…” didn’t, wouldn’t have given Jared the clear even if Jared had saw fit to clue him in on it but he might have agreed to tagging along, sticking to the shadows while Jared got the chance to be a normal teenager. Jared angles his chin up hard and cocks his hips, eyes narrowed like he wants something from Jensen but Jensen doesn’t know fucking _what,_ so he just gives in. “Yeah,” he says, voice small in his throat. “I said it was okay.”

Jared’s mouth twists downwards for a flash of a second before he’s back in true form, smiling bright. “Don’t wait up.” He pitches the apple and Jensen catches it on reflex an inch from his face.

-

Jensen waits up and he spends every single second of waiting up pacing and worrying himself closer to an ulcer, nightmare visions of Jared in the backyard of some house Jensen’s never seen, doesn’t know where it is, body stretched out in grass under the moon, inhibitions loosened by alcohol and the shift taking him in front of a crowd and he’ll ruin everything. Thousands of years of secrets, the safety of everyone Jensen has ever cared about, their lives.

Alpha will come down upon them, no saving Jared from that wrath, and they’ll die horribly and then hunters will come and Jensen’s family will all curse his name with their last breaths for risking this, for inviting plague into their home and burning them for the second time and they won’t recover. And it’s going to be all Jensen’s fault.

Ten o’ clock comes and the Moon is high and some have left to run the woods, but Jensen stays despite the pull of Moon so large and bright, beckoning with silver hands for Jensen to come join her in her forest but Jensen can’t.

Eleven o’ clock comes and for some reason Jensen had expected Jared by now. This was such a bad idea, why did he let this happen, why can’t he fucking do anything right?

Midnight comes and Jensen has scratched the back of his neck raw and chewed the inside of his lip bloody.

One in the morning comes, darkness still all around the house and Jensen wonders if his father can hear his pacing, if he knows what’s going on and if he let Jensen do this to prove a point. Maybe this is Jensen’s public stoning and maybe his father led him here. A pig to slaughter, a rabbit in a cage when the fox slips in.

By two in the morning Jensen has whipped himself into such a frenzy he’s close to tearing whole chunks of his hair out, eyes glossy, breath harsh and sharp and burning in his throat. He’s attracted a small audience; Chris, Tom, Misha, and Rachel sharing a bag of jerky between them as they sit on the counter and watch him pace restlessly, tossing his head, twitching all over, and assuring himself that Jared’s fine, they’re fine, everything’s fine and he hasn’t killed everyone.

He wouldn’t have heard the car normally, but he’s so keyed up that he can hear his own bare feet sticking to the wood flooring in deafening clarity, an old car on a slate driveway is nothing in comparison.

Jensen launches himself towards the foyer hearing Rachel’s echo of, “Showtime!” behind him but, fuck, he doesn’t even care, he just cares if Jared’s here and safe and hasn’t fucked up everything.

Jared staggers in and with him comes the smell of smoke and liquor and sweat that catches the edge of Jensen’s nostril and makes him sneeze. His clothes are rumpled, buttons of his shirt mismatched and uneven while there’s a purple little stain peeking out on his undershirt that perfumes synthetic grape extract and vodka. His shoulder collides with the doorway and he stumbles and then cackles.

“Hey,” Jensen says, a little harsh and a little short.

“Hey!” Jared smiles brilliantly, either not noticing the agitated set of Jensen’s shoulders or ignoring it all together. The smell on his breath hits Jensen full in the face and he recoils at that pot and grape and alcohol stink.

“Did you drive like this?” Jensen demands sharply.

“Yeah.” Jared jangles his keys. “It’s not like I was worried about hitting the zero other cars out on the road in the middle of bumfuck, here.”

“You think that’s really the problem here?” Jensen grits his aching teeth, pressure building up in his gums and with the subtle change his nostrils flare and his animal brain registers another smell lingering on Jared’s skin, not just sweat, but one person’s sweat smeared all over his skin, pressed into his pores and penetrating the fabric of him. Bitter salt, harsh suggestive pheromones, lingering and intoxicating endorphins smeared all over.

“What,” he growls, “Did you do?”

“I think,” Jared pronounces pristinely and with purpose, nuzzling into the words, “the better question is ‘who.’”

“Who?” Jensen grits.

“I dunno.” Jared shrugs sloppily. “I think his name was Zack or Jack or Mack or-“

Jensen has worked himself down to the raw nerves over the last hour, torn himself apart from the inside out, wheedled his self-restraint so thin that it’s a miracle in of itself that he can stop himself at slamming Jared into the door, body pressed up tight to his to keep him pinned even though it gets him closer to that stink of sex and schnapps that Jared’s practically sweating.

“You think this is fucking funny?” Jensen snarls, incisors scraping the edges of his tongue as they sharpen up. “I’m out of my god damn mind here waiting for you to get home safe and you’re off fucking some guy, Jared?” He slams Jared back into the door hard, wood creaking and Jared hisses and laughs.

Jared tilts his head to the side, smiling still but there’s a sort of malicious edge to it now, like the closer Jensen edges to losing his mind the more sadistic glee Jared wrings out of this. “I think this is hilarious,” he breathes right into Jensen’s face and his breath smells like someone else.

Jensen shakes his head, tries to clear it, tries to get something other than Jared in there before he does something drastic but then Jared’s grabbing him right back, fisting Jensen’s collar and hauling him in so hard that the seams of his shirt pull and snap.

“What’s the matter, Jensen?” Jared asks, sweet and sardonic and hot on Jensen’s face. “You don’t want to hear about the boy who wasn’t afraid of me and everything I let him do to me?”

“Shut up,” Jensen hisses.

“How hot it got in the back of his car, how tight of a fit it was?”

“Shut up!”

Jared’s still laughing at him, right at him, in his face and Jensen is hanging on by a fraying thread.

“What do you want from me?” Jensen pleads viciously, voice tight because he doesn’t want to be broken, he doesn’t want to let go and fall into whatever is on the other side of the line he’s drawn in the sand, the line that’s kept him safe for two years, he doesn’t want to feel so much for anything let alone one single person, he doesn’t want to be better than some teenage dropout slacker. He doesn’t want how much he wants. “Please, just tell me!”

The smile is slow to fade from Jared’s lips but it still burns bright in his eyes while he observes Jensen coolly, unintimidated by their position or proximity or Jensen’s teeth. “Everything,” he whispers.

The kiss is rough, primal, lips crushing and cutting on Jensen’s teeth but Jared’s lips are soft and warm and Jensen hates him so much because he can’t hate him at all. It’s hot and wet, heavy panting and the taste of everything Jared’s put in his body in the last seven hours buzzing through Jensen and he presses in harder to get to the _Jared_ underneath, wondering if he tastes as good as he smells.

To be honest, Jensen has only kissed a handful of people in his life. He’s probably sloppy, too eager and too angry for there to be anything but that primitive, burning need to know and mark his territory, but Jared works with him, pressing back just as hard, wanting just as much.

It’s just a kiss but Jensen gives Jared what he wants and pours _everything_ into it, all those fears and desires and Jared can take them, gives them back in spades.

Jared makes a sound, half whine, half grunt, and Jensen realizes all over again that they’re still pressed up against the front door, Jared’s spine crushed into the sturdy wood and they still have an audience.

“Well, god damn,” Rachel says, stunned and Misha starts to slow clap.

“Go!” Jensen booms and the sounds of their scrambling to get gone mingles with Jared’s breathy laughter. Jensen takes the reprieve like it is food and he’s starving, sucking down air that doesn’t smell like Jared and trying to get his head back on his shoulders because it feels like every cell in his body is screaming for Jared, urging him back for blood and lust. Too much. He shakes his head out like a wet dog. He has Jared’s spit on his lips. Too much, too fast.

“Hey, hey!” Jared snaps, loud in Jensen’s ear and those long fingers are untangling from his collar, pulling a few more seams before his fingers fumble and grip Jensen’s chin and bring his focus back forward center. “You don’t get to check out on me right now!”

Jensen tries to wrench his chin away, but Jared jerks harder, snaps “Look at me!” and Jensen does, but not at Jared’s face.

There’s a little purple mark peeking out from behind the bright white of Jared’s undershirt, someone else’s mark branded onto his collarbone.

Jensen feels his eyes glaze over like a shark’s.

Buttons pull and scatter when Jensen tears and it’s violent, harsh, frenzied in a way only something wound so tight for so long and released on a hair trigger can be. Jared hisses and arches into his lips and teeth when Jensen lays darker claim to the patch of skin, makes it _his_. His fingers twist into the fabric of Jared’s shirt at the back hem, winding up and pulling tight  until the tension of the line between Jensen’s fist and Jared’s shoulders leaves enough open space for Jensen to dip into the small of Jared’s back, feeling the smooth warmth and subtle planes of his body.

“Fuck!” Jared gasps, his own fingers knotting into Jensen’s hair the same way Jensen is pulling at his shirt, holding him closer instead of pulling him away. “Oh my god!”

Jensen’s forearm can curl around the width of his hips with room to spare because Jared is built so narrow, so compact that it’s easy to haul him forward, slot their hips together. Jensen sucks and worries the spot over with his tongue, eyes shut tight to everything except the pull on his scalp, the dig of nails into his shoulder, and the breathy half-sounds Jared’s huffing out just above him.

He’s so warm all over, Jensen marvels internally as he slides his hand up Jared’s back, mapping the blank space between the wings of his shoulder blades. He used to be so cold.

He thinks he tastes blood, but he isn’t sure so he starts to use teeth.

“Jensen,” Jared gasps, “Jensen, Jensen, come on, upstairs. Get me on a bed, come on.”

Jensen isn’t sure he could survive being away from Jared long enough to justify the move upstairs. There aren’t enough coherent thoughts in his head to coordinate the movement, anyway.

And if he does start thinking he’s going to start thinking about how he’s never _done this,_ too busy spending his teenage years not caring about people or himself enough to invest in the time or effort it would take to actually fuck someone and, shit, he doesn’t even really jerk off because it never really seemed worth the time or effort. He has no fucking idea what he’s doing. Jared is going to laugh at him again, right in his face and he’ll turn back to the Milos and the Zacks of the world, because he’s already fucked one already tonight.

Only Jared’s never fucked a guy before, has he? Gets fucked _by_ them, so really Jensen’s getting someone else’s sloppy seconds. Jensen is the shitty encore. Inadequate.

“Jensen!” Jared growls in his ear, tearing at Jensen’s hair and Jensen disengages with swollen lips and an open mouth, panting harshly as his head is jerked back at an angle, neck exposed to the open air and Jared.

“Look at me,” Jared commands again, voice low and rough like broken glass and hot asphalt ground into Jensen’s skin.

Jensen feels like a dog on a leash, chewing at the chain, chomping at the bit, feral and dangerous as he meets Jared’s bold gaze.

Mating is supposed to be sweet and soft, for cold nights with the wind in symphony in the background. Jared deserves that.

Jensen fists his hand in Jared’s shirt again, twists the fabric up and he hauls both of them on stumbling feet up the stairs.

They tumble to the floor in the bedroom, Jensen kicking the door closed behind them like it’s going to afford some privacy from the few who stayed in through the night. They’re a mess of groping hands and grinding hips and the fall breaks their lips. Jensen’s palms sting against the hardwood when he catches himself braced above Jared, staring down at the fan of Jared’s dark hair and the flush high on his cheeks. Their air mingles in foggy puffs between their bodies, window left wide open.

“Come on, Jensen,” Jared goads. “Or do you wanna hear more about what else Zack did to me? Huh?” He grins sharply. “You wanna hear about how sloppy he was, how quick he shot off, how he wasn’t even polite enough to offer up a reach-around?”

Whatever Jensen had been expecting to hear or know about Jared’s previous fuck, it hadn’t been that –and it had been bad enough when he thought Jared had been fucked within an inch of his life, coming hard on someone else’s cock, wearing someone else’s marks. If he thought that the notion that this boy, some faceless stranger Jensen hopes he never meets, was a bad lay would help soothe that primal, animal part of him he was wrong.

Bad enough the other boy touched where he shouldn’t have been touching, marked where he shouldn’t have been marking, but then he had the sheer fucking gall to not even make it good for Jared.

“Wanna see where else he touched me?” Jared teases, spreading out wide on the floor underneath Jensen and grinning that cat-with-the-cream grin, but not touching. If Jensen wants something he’s going to have to take it for himself.

“Show me.” Jensen doesn’t even recognize his own voice, it resonates so darkly.

Jared’s smile is vicious and white in the darkness, canine teeth gleaming in the brilliant moonlight.

His stomach is smooth and flat and radiates warmth despite the goosebumps that rise up across his skin when he crosses his arms over his chest and curls his fingers into the hem of his undershirt, tugging up slow like he’s putting on a show. Skin revealed inch by inch and Jensen stares, awed and transfixed by the roll and reveal of the body underneath him like he’s never seen skin before in his entire life.

Jensen feels like he’d actually burn if he touched Jared right now, fire and silver between them, thick in the air that catches in Jensen’s throat when Jared arches to peel the shirt up past the wings of his ribs and Jensen moves in counterpoint, a dance, a wave, to keep that scalding bracket of air between every inch of them so they don’t catch fire.

His eyes scrape all over Jared’s body like he’s been living in a desert his whole life and Jared is water.

The marks are pink and raised in patterns and patches all over his torso, not bruises, not yet, but before the sun breaks the horizon dark shadows will have settled into the marks and they’ll blacken up sweetly.

“Pretty, right?” Jared coos, mocking. “Amazing what boys who aren’t afraid of kissing me can get.”

The growl rattles out of Jensen’s chest like thunder, filling up the room to the brim for the brief moment that Jensen isn’t kissing Jared, but then it’s stifled between their mouths. It buzzes from Jensen’s lips through Jared’s. He traces scratch marks and fingerprints like they’re braille and if he maps them out long enough he’ll be able to read the night off of Jared’s skin.

Jensen wants to know if Jared got off like that, crammed into the back seat of a car, bent up in half with his knees next to his ears as some uncoordinated boy tried too hard to be a man, botching a sloppy fuck. Or maybe Jared was faced belly down, ass up and presented as his cheekbone ground down through rough upholstery or stuck to dry leather, mouth open wide and pink and wet on a moan as some idiot kid who didn’t know him, didn’t understand what Jared deserves, stretched him wide open and kept him there.

Jensen bites down hard into Jared’s lower lip and Jared gasps and ruts up against the thigh Jensen has wedged up between his legs.

“Keep going,” Jensen rumbles and their lips smear.

Jared laughs at him again, a burst of alcohol fugged breath right into Jensen’s face, but he keeps going. “Well, aren’t we getting all worked up? Does it bother you that much?”

Jensen bares his teeth against the side of Jared’s neck on the obvious yes and Jared laughs again.

“You really think this is funny, don’t you?” Jensen growls and presses down on Jared with his chest, covering him over in the same way he did a month ago in the foyer, only this time there’s less blood. “You get with that boy just to wind me up? Did you fucking plan this?” he demands.

Jared just grins, sharp and indulgent with his swollen red lips.

“Fuck you,” Jensen hisses.

Jared’s neck is hot and sweaty against the side of his mouth and Jensen can feel every dip and slip and jerk of muscle and skin through the bruised nerves of his lips as he drags them down, down, down; less like kissing and more like rubbing, smearing and pressing his face into the scent, the heat of the body underneath of him. He rubs his face down Jared’s chest, cheekbones grating against collarbones and an open mouth somewhere in between before dipping lower so he can feel the hitching of Jared’s breath telegraphed through the clench of his stomach into the thin skin of Jensen’s temple.

Jensen mouths at a blooming welt running down the center of Jared’s breastbone and he feels Jared’s breath catch on a gasp. He tastes like salt and smoke and Jensen latches down onto the smooth skin and _sucks._

“Oh,” comes trembling from Jared’s lips and he presses up into Jensen’s mouth, spine bowing up off the floor as his long fingers card up through Jensen’s hair, scratching and flexing.

Jensen crawls his way down Jared’s body, licking and biting and marking a clear path from his neck to his waistband –the dark trail of hair from the underside of his bellybutton to the very edge of where his jeans have ridden down low on his hips with all his writhing. The obstacle forces Jensen to pause, panting into the soft skin of Jared’s underbelly.

The ridge of Jared’s erection is obvious and thick, sitting along the crease of his thigh where leg meets hip and Jensen can’t help but stare at the swell of flesh and fabric, close enough that if he licked over his lips the tip of his tongue would catch against the head –the fabric over the head- and he’d get a taste. A faint taste, a ghost, really. Diluted by fabric, but Jensen could get that salt and flavor on his tongue.

“Jensen,” Jared whines and wriggles, hips churning up into the unforgiving inseam of his own jeans and Jensen wonders if he even got off at all with the other boy. “Jensen, please, come on!”

Every urge and instinct Jensen has is telling him to rut and fuck and Jared is quite literally begging for it, so neither of them really expects Jensen to bury his face between Jared’s legs and breathe in deeply every bit of Jared that his lungs can hold.

The sound that peels from Jared’s throat doesn’t have a name and if it did it wouldn’t be complimentary, but his body goes tight with it, hands clenching, thighs trembling against Jensen’s neck. Rough denim abrades the outer curl of Jensen’s ears and against his nose, his lips as he practically feasts on the scent of Jared.

“Jesus!” Jared gasps.

 _No_ , Jensen thinks. _Just Jensen._

His scalp stings where Jared is pulling sharply at his hair, practically tearing, and his face bruises where Jared is grinding up into him and that warm, heady scent of _want_ permeates every inch of him, filling Jensen up like nothing else ever has or could and it’s so addictive Jensen takes seconds.

Underneath of that want, though, is the synthetic sting of cherry flavored lubricant and _other._

Something in the zipper of Jared’s jeans shatters when Jensen tears at it and Jared hisses and groans, rolling his hips up into the air to help Jensen rip the pants from his hips and reveal the spread of tan, bare skin.

When they moved to Vermont two years ago Poppy was a senior in high school and all those home grown girls used to cough - _slut-, -whore-_ behind her back when she walked down the halls with her short skirts, her long, long legs, and her sly red smile. Jensen had overheard some girls gossiping about her once, whispering horrible things about how girls who don’t wear panties are asking for it. Jensen never really understood what they thought Poppy was asking for, exactly; but it didn’t even matter because by the end of the year Poppy had successfully burned through every single steady-going relationship in the graduating class and single-handedly made prom night a living nightmare for everyone involved because hell hath no fury. There are still stalls upon stalls of graffiti dedicated to Poppy and loathing her, calling her names and pointing out over and over again, Pantyless Poppy.

Jensen hadn’t seen the problem. He never wore underwear, and as far as he knew Adrianne and Danneel only bought things because they enjoy the delicacy of lingerie, lace against their skin, but no one was ever going to tell Jensen or Mark or Jeff or even Alona that they were asking for anything.

He thinks he gets it now, though.

The difference between not wearing underwear and asking for ‘it’.

Jensen isn’t wearing underwear.

Jared is asking for trouble.

Jared has been asking for trouble for a week. Pushing and pushing and pushing, waiting for Jensen to snap.

Jensen’s fingers clench into either side of Jared’s fly, zipper biting and he stares and Jared laughs again, tipping his head back and wriggling in delight at Jensen’s frozen reaction.

“You think you’re so cute,” Jensen grits out from between clenched teeth.

“I do,” Jared grins cheekily and Jensen strips him of his jeans in one swift movement and then Jared’s naked.

Spread out across the dark hardwood of Jensen’s floor, shameless in the lines of himself the way he has never been before as he bends up one knee casually and tucks his hands behind his head.

Jensen’s breath catches hard in his chest, choking him for a moment as he takes the other boy in for the first time like this. He’s seen Jared naked, but he’s never seen this.

Jared cocks an eyebrow at him, grins, says, “Stalling out on me over there, wolfman?” with this snotty little tone and then Jensen is on top of him, teeth imprinting into his neck.

Jensen had another man on his back like this once, with teeth digging into his neck.

He doesn’t hurt Jared. He doesn’t think he could if he wanted to, if he tried, if he really actually hated Jared any more than he already does and doesn’t.

Jensen’s fingers trail to follow the bitter cherry smell and slip over the velvet skin of Jared’s cock on the way down, trailing a light path over his hardness that has Jared breathing harshly into his ear before Jensen finds the inner crease of his thigh and follows it down and in to where Jared’s wet and hot and open wide.

He doesn’t press in. Not immediately, not at first. The situation is so surreal in itself that it takes a few moments and Jared pushing back while whining, “Jensen, come on,” again into his ear before he does end up sinking two fingers deep into Jared without any resistance and they both hiss and arch.

Jared is hot and tight and slick on the inside and, Christ, that means he was fucked, what, an hour ago? Maybe? Seconds and moments and minutes since he was on his back for someone else, thinking about Jensen but grinding down onto another boy.

The thought makes Jensen crazier than he already was, sends that fire burning hot and harsh in his chest spiraling out and engulfing him wholly.

“Move,” Jensen growls but he doesn’t actually wait for Jared to start moving before he flips Jared, gets him down on his belly and then drags him to the bed, but not _on_ to the bed.

Bare knees digging into hard flooring, Jensen bends Jared over the end of the bed and Jared’s still laughing that harsh, malicious little laugh, egging him on.

“Shut up!” Jensen snaps and shakes out his head, snorting furiously even as he plants a solid hand on the back of Jared’s neck and grinds his face into the mattress. “Fuck! Can’t you ever just close your mouth?”

“I thought you’d like my mouth open,” Jared grins over his shoulder at Jensen and Jensen shakes out his head again.

Jensen digs his fingers back into Jared, pumping up into the slick heat of Jared’s hole in a blatant mockery of what they both really want and in the back of his mind he’s wondering if there’s enough lube, if Jared’s prepped enough, if he could take him like this, just like this, but it’s all in the back of his mind.

“You used a condom with him?” Jensen asks.

Jared stops for the first time, less amused and more annoyed. “Yeah, of course,” he scoffs over his shoulder.

Jensen nods, something in his brain rattling around. “You won’t with me.”

The button of his jeans tears out when Jensen jerks his pants open without remorse for some article of clothing that isn’t his and he doesn’t even bother to strip himself in any format before he’s jerking his dick out of his pants, jacking a few times to with a twist and a curl to spread the thin drips of precome as far as they’ll go and then he’s hooking one hand into Jared’s hip and lining their bodies together like puzzle pieces.

Jensen presses in, grinding and incessant and Jared stretches like a cat underneath of him, arching back into the assault with his hips and pressing out forward with his hands to knead at the sheets. He whimpers for Jensen and it is, without a single shred of a doubt in Jensen’s mind, the best sound he has ever heard.

They smell amazing together, sweat and lust mingling on the air and when Jensen gasps he gets his throat clotted with it.

Jared feels like a silk glove all around him, squeezing down on Jensen’s cock. Jensen can’t think, can’t breathe for a moment and is reduced to uselessly rolling his forehead into the sweaty skin between the wings of Jared’s shoulder blades while he tries to catch up with his own body.

But when he does catch up, he catches up with a vengeance.

Jensen’s vicious, fucking him like instinct is telling him is right and Jared’s egging him on with, “Yes, yes, there, come on, oh.” Jensen’s hips sting and the tan of Jared’s as glows red with their clashing and it’s violent, dark, dirty and it’s so good and it hurts amazingly until Jensen’s fingers trip over a scar low on Jared’s back and everything comes to a cold, grinding halt.

“I’m sorry,” Jensen chokes out, nose buried in Jared’s sweaty hair at the base of his neck, chest pressed tight against the slope of his back. “I’m sorry.” Sorry about running, sorry about being afraid, sorry that it had to happen like this.

And Jared is on his stomach underneath of Jensen, Jared is naked and Jensen is fully clothed, Jared is getting fucked and Jensen is doing the fucking, and for everything that life has ever told him about situations like this, Jensen thinks he should be in control here, but he’s not. He’s never been in control with Jared. He’s had to adapt or perish.

Jared reaches back with one arm and rests his hand gently over the crown of Jensen’s head, holding as he hushes. “I know,” he whispers. “Jensen, I know, it’s okay. Wasn’t mad, promise I wasn’t mad. I forgive you, okay?”

The absolution is biblical. It steals Jensen’s breath right out of his lungs and burns in his eyes and in his throat and he wishes they hadn’t done this like animals so that he could look at Jared’s face right now, kiss him properly and love him instead of just fucking him.

The brutal edge of his pace fades out into something slow and deep and Jared cries out, whimpering underneath him with his face pressed into the bed. They tremble and sweat together, Jensen rocking his hips deep and Jared rolling back to meet him like the tides in the ocean.

Jensen’s hands slip under Jared’s body, sliding between the warm skin of his stomach and the mattress and trace downwards, fingertips mapping out the cut of hipbone and the smooth of stomach before teasing along the wetness of the smooth, rounded head of Jared’s dick before he finds a spot that Jared seems to like in particular –breath hitching, “Jensen,” as he clenches and preens- and Jensen focuses kneading small circles right there, just on that one tender nerve, with the inner curve of his thumb while his other hand wanders to stroke down the slope of Jared’s inner thigh.

“You’re so amazing,” Jensen whispers into the hollow behind Jared’s ear as he presses forward, feeling Jared spread open for every inch of him. “I don’t deserve you.”

“Fuck,” Jared gasps and widens up his knees like there’s some way Jensen could possibly drive in any deeper inside of him. He drops his head down between his hands, forehead pressed into the sheets so that his shoulders are a mountain range for Jensen’s mouth to climb and conquer, sucking bruises in place of planting flags. “Not true,” he chokes out. “Not even a little bit.”

Jensen isn’t sure if Jared’s arguing the amazing part or Jensen’s assertion that he’s not good enough but Jensen concedes that in his mind no one is really ever going to be good enough for Jared, no one is ever going to be able to come close, and if Jared’s going to pick someone, single one person out to fuck and fuck with and tell them the world like it is, Jensen’s glad it’s him.

“Jensen,” Jared chants like prayer. “Jensen, please, oh my god.”

Jensen strokes Jared in time with the deep roll of his hips, surrendering no ground even as Jared sobs for it until Jared comes undone on his terms for once, just this once.

Jared’s body coils for the release all around him, tight and hot and slick and Jensen can barely keep his wits about him long enough to trip the trigger and watch Jared ignite. Jared comes in flexes and hitched breathes, body clenching and spasming as he streaks Jensen’s hands and sheets with come and it feels like it lasts forever, as slow as Jensen can drag it out until Jared is just twitching, fluttering muscles and whimpers and Jensen can’t keep his tenuous grip on control for one second longer.

Jensen comes like he’s suffocating, like he’s going blind, like he’s dying.


	14. Chapter 14

  
The sheet is gauzy white and thin, practically radiant in the sunlight slating in through the open window and casting everything caught underneath it in a hazy filtered glow. Jensen sacrifices a fraction of the warmth that the sheet would offer to keep the view. They tuck the sheet under their shoulders and up around their heads, pulling it taught and laughing the entire time about absolutely nothing.

Jensen feels stupid and giddy, doesn’t even know where to begin to start to untangle all the strange fluff filling him inside and he wants to burst with it.

Jared’s hair is dark and tangled all over their sheets, stark against the white. The sheets light up the tan of his skin, the bruised red of his lips, the marks Jensen left all over and Jensen tucks his thumb into a bruise matching up shape and size, and marvels.

“Is this weird?” he asks. There should be more dates and stuff first. He didn’t even technically properly court Jared, they only ran together once. This is weird. Jensen shouldn’t be laughing.

“You’re a werewolf.” Jared smiles, teeth as white as the sheets all around him, and resituates himself on the mattress. “Your life is kinda weird, Jensen.”

Jensen concedes the point and watches Jared settle in, burrowing deeper into the mattress with his body and twisting until his stomach was flat and he’s reached some semblance of comfort. The long lines of his body are clean and compact, strong and angular like he was carved rather than grown and Jensen’s abashed for having the chance to take him in, right down to the curve of his ass and Jensen knows if he pried, pressed in, Jared would still be wet, open, ready, marked.

“Quit it,” Jared mutters with his eyes closed.

“What?”

“Watching me,” he huffs. “I’m trying to nap.”

“Tired?” Jensen teases and Jared opens his eyes again in lazy slits.

“And sore,” he adds. “And my head hurts.”

“That’s what you get for staying out drinking.” Jensen shrugs, unsympathetic.

A subdued little grin breaks across Jared’s lips, smug and exhausted. “Worked, didn’t it?”

Jensen snorts a laugh. “Do you want some water or something?”

“God, yes, please,” Jared groans and rolls over.

Getting out of bed is a chore, partially because Jensen’s sore and Jared’s in the way but mostly because Jensen doesn’t want to.

He pulls on some loose shorts and a thin long sleeved green shirt that’s nearly sheer with fatigue that he thinks is really Jared’s from before but Jensen likes the color.

He leaves Jared in a tangle of sheets, snoring slightly, and shuts the door softly behind him as he tries to decide what food he’ll be able to botch the least to bring back with the water and pain meds.

Jensen stretches up tall and yawns, back cracking and he realizes as he relaxes that he’s really, truly in a good mood.

The drywall cracks and buckles inward when his skull connects with the wall and the forearm pressing into his throat cuts off his air so quickly that his vision goes splotchy. He half-shifts just on instinct, teeth and claws that he snaps and gouges with but they’re shaken out of him by harsh hands and his head meets the wall again on a harsh _crack_ that steals his breath.

“Did you fuck him?” Alpha demands, words cutting right through Jensen’s ears like he needs more confirmation than the smell Jensen hasn’t washed off his skin yet.

Jensen blinks away the spots in his vision deliriously, throat working futilely for air that won’t come.

Alpha looks old, like the last two years were really ten hundred, wearing him down past the skin and into the soul. His hair is unkempt and he’s gone unshaven and he looks like what the Europeans thought the Wolf Man really looked like and Jensen wants to feel for him, but Jensen’s father died in a fire two years ago and the thing standing in front of him now, snarling and feral, isn’t him.

“Did you?” he snarls again, letting up on his arm just enough that Jensen can gather his wits about him enough to realize Alpha wants him to try and deny, wants him to cower.

Jensen waits for the fear to wash over him but the tide of emotion swelling up in his chest isn’t fear, it’s vindictive and angry and acidic in his veins as it pumps from his heart to his brain.

“Yeah,” Jensen rasps. He shoves the body on top of him hard and sharp, sending the older man stumbling back an unexpected step and Jensen realizes for the first time that he’s taller than his father. He squares up his shoulders and sets his feet in counter-point, a fighting stance. “I did.”

Fury isn’t the right word for what passes over Alpha’s face. He looks murderous, like he wants to _hurt,_ and Jensen angles his chin out against the expression.

“No son of mine,” is all he can stammer out, eyes haunted. “No son of mine!”

“What? No son of yours would do what?” Jensen demands harshly, stepping into Alpha’s space, challenge written all across his body in harsh lines and hard angles. “Fuck an ex-human?”

The slap stings across his cheek and cracks his head to the side and Alpha’s claws come away bloody.

Jensen gasps through the pain torn down the side of his face, clasping at his soggy cheekbone and getting slick palms and stabbing pain for his trouble.

Jensen glares up at his father with his mouth hanging open, defiant and affronted as he clutches the ruined side of his face.

Alpha’s lip trembles and Jensen wonders if he’s remembering when Jensen was four and couldn’t understand why falling hurt or why getting back up again was so hard. He snorts once furiously, right in Jensen’s face, and shakes his head wildly.

“No son of mine,” he repeats, spitting the words at Jensen before he turns and stalks off.

Jensen stares down the empty hall as his heart beat pounds the adrenaline through his system and he tongues at his cheek to see if any of the gashes tore straight through, but he feels mostly intact, though the cuts sting and open with the movement. The blood tickles as it rolls down his neck in skinny lines, sticking to the creases of his skin and he scratches at them idly before they can seep into his shirt. 

Something big just happened, Jensen thinks. Something huge.

“Jensen?” Alona’s voice comes sleepy and soft from her doorway.

“Hey.” Jensen’s voice is a little beyond hoarse and he tries to clear his throat subtly when he turns towards her. 

She’s alone in the doorway in a pair of faded blue boxers that she’s folded over three times at the waist to get them snug around her hips and a grey shirt that swims around her frame, bleary like she just woke up at the commotion and a peek around her reveals she’s just alone, period.

“Jesus,” she exhales, at his side before he can even really comprehend that she’s moved, angling his chin up and squinting hard at the cuts down the side of his face. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he assures and tries to bat her away gently. “I’m fine, ‘Lona.”

Something around her eyes softens slightly but she doesn’t surrender her grip on his chin.

“Come on.” She pats his unmarred cheek and starts for the stairs. “Let’s get downstairs and let me patch you up.”

“I’m supposed to be making breakfast,” he protests, a shade of his good mood returning as he acclimates to the lack of immediate danger while trailing behind the subtle bob of her long, loose hair.

Alona snorts and shoots him an amused look over her shoulder. “Do you even know how to hold a spatula?”

“Which one’s the spatula?” Jensen jokes and the laugh startles out of Alona, and she glances over her shoulder at him again, stunned. She pauses on the steps, takes him in.

“Come on,” she says again after a long moment. “I’ll help you make breakfast.”

Jensen insists that they start the water boiling before she starts in on him for the sake of time management but as soon as the pot is seated on the stove she has him sitting on the counter, leaning forward with his shoulders bunched up to get on her level and she wipes and cleans.

“So he’s pretty mad, huh?” she starts, falsely droll as she swipes down his neck, folding the pink side of the damp napkin over again

“He’ll get over it.” Jensen shrugs. Or maybe he won’t. Jensen doesn’t care. 

“Hold still,” she instructs and gets down to brass tacks, scrubbing down the actual gouges and Jensen winces. She manipulates his jaw, holding his face up towards the light from the window before pulling him down again so she doesn’t have to reach. She thumbs along the outer curve of the middle gouge, the one that runs deepest and longest, up close to the corner of his eye so that it burns every time he blinks and he doesn’t want to think what would have happened if his father’s hand had arched a little higher, struck a little harder. “You don’t need stitches but I’m gonna butterfly them just in case, okay?” 

“Yeah,” he says but when she turns for the bathroom, where the cabinet behind the mirror holds their bare-bones first aid kit, he snags her wrist and reels her back in between his knees, folding her small frame in his arms and settling his chin onto her shoulder. 

Alona freezes up for a moment before she melts and hugs him back. 

“I never said it,” Jensen whispers and nuzzles into her hair where she smells like roses and the ocean, “but thank you. You know, for everything.” 

He presses his lips firmly to her cheekbone, leaves little bloody smears but if the way she clings tight to his shoulders and buries herself into his hold is any indication, she doesn’t mind. She nuzzles in close to his neck, cold nose nudging up underneath his skin and something cold and wet drips down his throat. She sniffs. He rubs her back and doesn’t say anything. 

Jensen holds still while she patches him up with stinging disinfectant and soothing ointment, pinning the deepest parts of the wounds together before taping them closed and Jensen wonders if they’ll be memories before the end of next week. He’ll have to wear a hood through school or bandage the entire site entirely so he can tell anyone who cares enough to ask that he ran into a wall, fell down some stairs, is just plain clumsy. 

She teaches him how to poach eggs and make béarnaise, shouting, “No, no! Don’t stop whisking! What are you doing, you’re not fighting it! Whisk!” but he gets away with only burning it a little bit. They have artificial crab meat in the fridge, shrink wrapped in plastic packaging so tight that Jensen can feel the bumps of texture along the surface when he slices it open and that fishy, _wet_ smell comes pouring out and he snorts but pulls out the crab flakes as Alona instructed while she toasts the English muffins. All in all it takes a little under a half an hour to get around to stacking the toast with the round, perfect egg, layering the crab meat on top and ladling the bright yellow sauce over the whole mess and it looks and smells amazing. 

They stand back and admire the plate. It’s a little messy, stray smudges of sauce and one popped egg yolk that Alona ate for him, but Jensen’s proud of it. A little accomplishment to start the morning. 

“Congratulations, Jensen Ackles.” Alona claps him on the back. “You just made eggs oscar.” 

Jensen smiles so hard the bandages pull and she has to re-tape them.

-

Jared is pleasantly sore but unpleasantly hungover and he swears that next time –and there will be a next time, hopefully later tonight if he can hack it- they’re both going to be sober and calm and it’s going to be so spectacular. 

He smiles indulgently at the thought, twisting up in their sheets and spreading out on his stomach to take up as much space as he can because sleeping on the dog bed for two weeks was a bitch and a half and didn’t smell a fraction as good. Jared inhales deep just because he can. 

The light knock on door precedes it opening by bare seconds and the smile that curls Jared’s lips is happy lazy and a touch permissive as he glances over his shoulder. “Took you long eno-” 

His voice cuts out. 

“Hey,” Jensen smiles, the scabs running the length of cheekbone to chin crinkling up painfully and stretching hard against the little bandages keeping them –them, plural, three- tacked together. The gashes are long and thin, like claw marks. “I made you some food, too,” Jensen prattles along like nothing’s wrong, setting the tray Jared barely noticed coming in with him on the floor next to the mattress and busying himself with getting the plates, glasses, cutlery and napkins organized. “Alona helped, so you know you can eat it.”

“Jensen…” Jared begins slowly, drawing the name out as long as he can without adding new syllables. “What happened to your face?”  

Jensen shrugs noncommittally passing up a plate with a cute little egg and biscuit tower sat squarely in the middle without making eye contact. “My father.” 

“Jesus!” Jared grabs for Jensen’s face, sheet slipping down around his hips as he stretches for a hold and then forces Jensen to look him in the eye. He’s never met Jensen’s father, which feels strange considering they have been inhabiting the same thousand square feet of space for a little under a month, but he can just imagine long claws slicing through the pale skin of Jensen’s cheek, cutting straight through soft tissue and freckles. “Why the hell…”

It strikes him all at once and Jensen purses his lips and looks away. 

“Was this because of me?” Jared chokes. 

“No,” Jensen protests quickly, rising to sit on the bed next to him. “Not you. More… us.” 

“Because we…” 

Jensen nods and Jared covers his mouth. His stomach roils dangerously in his throat and his head throbs. 

“It’s okay, though,” Jensen assures quickly. “It doesn’t matter.”

The side of his face is carved open and it ‘doesn’t matter.’ 

“Wh-what did he say?” Jared stammers and he can’t stop staring at the three stripes painted down the side of Jensen’s face in his own blood. 

Jensen mumbles something. 

“What?” Jared demands. 

“No son of mine,” Jensen repeats, louder. “He just said ‘no son of mine,’ and then hit me.”

Jared feels sick. The nausea rolls through him, fueled by the hangover but ignited and alive with something else entirely.  “Oh my god.”

This is his fault. He did this. He put Jensen in this position, disowned by his only parent and cut, hit, hurt because Jared just had to push Jensen out of his comfort zone. 

“It’s okay,” Jensen assures again, soft smile and warm hands on Jared’s shoulders, grounding him. “I can take a hit or two.”

“Or two?” Jared squeaks out. 

Jensen shrugs. “He’ll look for reasons now, shit he let me slide on before, but he won’t touch you while I’m around so you don’t have to worry about it, okay?”

Jared hadn’t been worried about getting hit himself until this exact second. 

“Would it help if we stopped?” he asks frantically, desperately. 

Jensen goes quiet and stares at the bed, red stripes stark against pale skin, next to dark lashes. “Do you want to stop?”

“No, Jensen!” Jared snaps. “But that’s not the point! The point is that you don’t know what it’s like to live in a house where someone wants to _hurt_ you! And I can’t- I can’t do that to you, okay? Don’t -don’t make this something bad because I want to protect you.” 

“Hey, hey, hey,” Jensen clucks and his hands slide up Jared’s neck to cup his cheeks, holding him close. “Don’t worry about it, okay?” he says when the day before yesterday he would have been the one flipping his shit. 

“Oh my god, I broke you,” Jared wheezes. 

Jensen laughs lightly under his breath and kisses Jared gently on his slack mouth. “I made food, it’s getting cold.” 

Jared nods dumbly, feels like he’s having an out of body experience. 

He can’t do that to Jensen. 

He can’t make Jensen live like that, the way he lived for three months of fear and pain. 

He needs to leave. 

The realization is overpowering in its sense of right, correct, yes. That’s it. He needs to leave. Now, right now, before the next strike breaks Jensen’s jaw or tears straight through his cheek or gouges into his eye or burrows through his neck, nicking an artery and spilling everything everywhere. 

Jared feels like he’s going to be sick all over Jensen’s bed and his worrywart brain flares up, firing on all cylinders and he burns through the situation, eats it up and spits it back out again. Full moon is tonight and he can slip away into the darkness, can’t take his car because they know his plates, they could call him in. All of his clothes are in Jensen’s closet and he doesn’t think he could get away with trying to pack them up let alone trying to sift through the mass to pick apart his clothes from Jensen’s but, really, Jared has enough money stocked up that he can buy a few new outfits to tide him over until he can get a new job wherever he ends up. He can sleep as a wolf in the woods, he’s not above begging for scraps as a dog. 

His dad used to take him hunting sometimes when he was younger and the few things that ever did sink in during boy scouts was how animals track, how to hide your scent. He thinks he could slip Jensen, get lost in the woods and never come back. Maybe he could stumble into some new town from the woods and pretend he doesn’t remember a thing.

He’ll think of something. He always thinks of something. 

Jared can be one of those rogues Alona told him about. Not the renegade type, out for human blood, but he can pull lone wolf. 

He’ll go to college, he’ll get a job, he’ll move to a city, he’ll lock himself inside every full moon, and he’ll live. 

It doesn’t matter that Jensen is amazing or Alona is sweet or Sebastian is funny or Mark is intense or Danneel is pushy or Adrianne is hardcore or Misha is strange or Sam is wonderful or Jeff exudes a sense of calm or if Jenna and Nikki and Robby are perfect and Jared wants to listen to Jensen read them stories for as long as he can get away with. 

This was the plan. This was always the plan. 

“Do you like them?” Jensen asks brightly and Jared realizes he’s been eating the eggs without tasting anything. 

“Yeah,” he mumbles. “They’re great, Jensen.” 

-

The inside of the office is dark and it smells overwhelmingly and oppressively of nothing. He’s grown so used to his own isolated stink that fresh air is what smells strange now. He thinks that he should have moved a bed into the office at some point to take up some space and give him a soft place to rest his back at night, but he can never bring himself to bring his wedding bed and sleep on it alone. He won’t sleep on the old bed, and he certainly won’t buy a new one, so he’s stuck with the leather couch with the blown out seams and the cracked creases that hold the imprint of his body in the beaten cushions and shattered springs after two solid years of continuous abuse. 

Really the couch and the desk and the window are the only three things in the room, not including the computer, the papers, and himself. He never counts himself. 

Floating motes of dust catch in the sickly pool of pale sunlight slanting in through the venetian blinds, nearly dazzling like sparkles but he knows that in reality that dust is dead skin particles and dirt, not glitter. 

He sits alone, in the darkened corner of the office, and despite the fact he knows that the dirt on the air is still touching him he feels better that he can’t see it. 

He is a creature of the dark and in the dark he’ll stay. 

Back in his time when Alpha fell only the strongest could stand up to fill his place, fighting for the right to posture dominance over the pact, the honor of leading. His father wasn’t Alpha, his father was nothing. His Alpha had no son and when illness took his Alpha a court was held, potentials were selected and after the mourning of one Moon the true test commenced. 

He’d heard horror stories of other trials that had ended in death and mutilation but he wasn’t afraid because he knew in his bones that he would be Alpha, and Alphas had no fear because fear was a commodity they could not afford. He was young and proud and if ever he would have been punished for those two fatal flaws the night under the full moon in the clearing with the others who had been judged worthy would have been it. 

But he wasn’t. 

His youth and his pride were rewarded and with bloody lips he took his pack and assumed his role. 

He was good with numbers in a way his predecessor had never been and Silvalopus flourished under his hands. He married his sweetheart and he loved her with the devotion of the stars to the moon and together they had one son, one perfect boy. Jensen. 

He knew that when his time came Jensen’s lineage wouldn’t help him in the trial for dominance, but for a long time he saw that same folly of pride and youth in his son and he thought that one day, once his time was done, Jensen would be a strong leader. 

But when _the humans_ came Jensen’s youth and Jensen’s pride failed him in the most fundamental way. 

It’s not Jensen’s fault his mother died and he doesn’t blame him, not really. It was Jensen’s flaw as a leader, but, more importantly, _the humans._ Jensen was tested before his time and the situation, the fire, the death and bloody mayhem would have never existed without _the humans_. Jensen wasn’t ready for the responsibility that was shoved upon him and he did the best he could, just that the best he could do wasn’t good enough to save their home, their lives. 

That was when he really started to reconsider his son, even more so afterward when Jensen deteriorated under the pressure of change. 

These weren’t traits of a good Alpha, these weren’t traits of the strong. 

He had spawned weakness. Allowed it to live in his home and breathe his air because he was blinded by his own fatherly affection. He had held the small glimmer of a hope that Jensen would rise above himself and his own inadequacies and become better than his fears. 

Two years he was waiting for Jensen, bitter and disappointed that the apple had indeed fallen so far from the tree, but he still loved his son and he still prayed for him. 

But then Jensen had to go and bring that _boy,_ that _human,_ into their home, the stupid fucking monster that burned them out, sent his wife, Jensen’s mother, to her death and Jensen had the gall, the fucking audacity, to shield the boy as if the shift would ever change him from what he really was. 

_ Human.  _

He had conceded because Jensen was his son and however pathetic the boy was he didn’t want to have to tear through him. Jensen had his mother’s eyes. He didn’t want to see them without life. 

But he would if he had to. 

Especially now. 

Now that the weakling he accidentally helped foster into this world had disobeyed the natural law of conduct twofold; firstly with another boy, and secondly with _a human._ He was compromised when he came to his son. He should have purged the whelp as soon as he’d slipped from his mother’s womb crying. 

Sick. 

Sickness like that had to be cleaved from the herd lest it infect the others, and he would be the strong one and wield the cleaver. 

He would do what he had to in order to keep his pack safe. Whatever he had to. 

No exceptions. 

No sons. 

Certainly no _humans._


	15. Chapter 15

  
Jared is fidgety all day, making and remaking plans as he runs the logistics over and over again in his head with an acute paranoia. He says his subtle goodbyes and feels the rise of nerves trembling in his hands and churning in his stomach so hard sometimes he can’t breathe.

He’s scared.

He’s terrified, but that’s not the point.

Jared has never let being afraid get in his way and he’s not going to start today just because Jensen keeps smiling at him from across the couch while they burn through the rest of Jensen’s bag of overdue movie rentals.

Jensen is relaxed like Jared has never seen him before, joints loose and smile easy and every time Jared starts to feel a little flare of pride for putting that smile there his eyes catch on the marks clawed into Jensen’s face.

Jensen’s father was willing to kill Jared, Jared has no illusions about what he could be driven to do to a disowned son.

The more he thinks about his plan the better it is. Full moon is perfect because they’ll all be scattered and even if they wanted to look for Jared they won’t be able to reorganize as people until the sun rises, giving Jared hours of head start. They won’t be able to go to the police looking for him, if they ever felt so inclined, because they would have to figure out how to explain what a naked boy that they aren’t related to ended up stranded in the middle of the forest on their watch in the first place. Jared won’t have a human tongue to risk anything slipping through his teeth to give him away.

Every time he starts to think that maybe he’s overreacting he catches the edge of Jensen’s cuts in the peripheral of his vision and sees how close those thick red lines are to Jensen’s eye, how this day could have easily been spent holding a wadded up piece of gauze over Jensen’s face and wondering if he would ever be able to see again.

He’s not overreacting.

He’s right.

Still though, he almost starts to hyperventilate when the sun begins to dip in the sky and he wants to cling as hard as he can for as long as he can, but that’s not fair to Jensen.

“You guys coming?” Katie pokes her head into the den, blond hair falling over her bare shoulders.

Jensen leans back to glance out the window and Jared swallows a hysterical little giggle and remembers Jensen’s story about the fishermen praying to the sun to stay up forever so the wolves wouldn’t come, for the moon to stay away.

But the story had a purpose.

Don’t succumb to fear; embody it and make it yours.

“Yeah, sure,” Jensen says easily and rolls off the couch and Jared allows himself to be pulled along after him.

“When it starts,” Jensen explains as they hike out deep into the woods and Jared looks up into the new stars, trying to pinpoint which way is north, “It might be a little overwhelming, but Moon chose you for a reason, she’s not going to leave you alone through this, okay?”

Jared nods absently, squinting out into the baby twinkles. Where the fuck was the little dipper?

“Hey.” Jensen’s fingers curl under his elbow, gripping his attention and Jared snaps-to to find Jensen staring him over analytically, concern all over his features. “You okay?”

“Just a little nervous.” Jared smiles wobbly. “Big night, right?”

Jensen’s returning smile is a flash of bright white and sweet comfort. “You’ll be great, don’t worry about it.” 

Jared nods and his stomach rolls.

They sit out on a stone ridge waiting for the moon, Jensen pointing out the lay of the land they’ve traipsed over before and Jared soaks up the lessons and commits them to memory as clearly as he can in case he needs to know where the black bears sleep through the winter.

Jared can feel the shift begin to buzz under his skin when the white wedge of moon splits the horizon and the sky starts to blacken sincerely.

“Do you feel it?” Jensen asks, breath foggy up around his streaked cheek and Jared pulls his knees into his chest and nods.

He’ll miss Jensen.

Jared lets out a shaky exhale and feels his cheekbones ache as they start to spread in the first touches of moonlight, nasal cavity thickening up and warping subtly so that Jared can smell the world all around him and he breathes in Jensen as deeply as he’ll go.

The shift itself is still terrifying and agonizing, even with Jensen at his side the entire time telling him that he’s doing so well, that he’s so proud.

Jared hits the forest floor as a wolf and he’s scared, but when Jensen shifts the cuts on his face shift with him, longer down the side of his furred cheek and Jensen shakes his head and rubs his face through the dirt before shaking himself out, and Jared wonders if shifting torn tissue hurts even more.

He breathes in slowly, calm and sure, and he breathes out.

By the time Jensen refocuses on him Jared is stamping his forepaws and crouching, tail up high in the air and yipping playful little barks that make Jensen light up all over. Jared nips at Jensen’s tail and Jensen takes off and Jared does chase him to the edge of the park.

There is a scorched tree larger than life in the middle of the woods, lightning burns scarring its old trunk and splitting it right down the middle and though it’s been rotting for years the forest has yet to disintegrate the deadweight completely.

They hit the tree at a sprint, Jensen blazing a trail far ahead.

He goes left.

Jared goes right, towards the river. He drops his head and pours on the speed, body pounding and legs burning and he runs like it’s the only thing he was born to do, cold air drying up his throat and burning through his lungs even as his muscles cramp and burn he pushes harder because he doesn’t know how small the window of opportunity he has is. He _pushes_ like he’s a steam engine and he _can_.

He’s not satisfied that someone isn’t following him, even when seconds fade into minutes and the tender pads of his paws are scraped raw and burning because he hasn’t had a lifetime to build up the calluses Jensen has and he still has to keep an eye open for everyone else.

He can _feel_ the pursuit, and whether that’s just blatant paranoia or if the thunderous footfalls he can hear echoing through the valley all around him are real, it doesn’t matter. He spurs himself harder, faster. He drops down lower to the ground, center of gravity shifting and legs stretching wider and he pumps his entire body into the movement.

His chest burns like he’s breathing fire, heavy panting smoking just as much from his gaping mouth. His fur clings to his body with sweat and he looks to the moon, wondering how much time has passed or how he’s going to learn how to tell how much time has passed if he doesn’t have Jensen and he left his computer under Jensen’s bed with a brief note open on the screen explaining the bare bones of the situation if Jensen ever feels inclined to open the thing when he’s throwing out all of Jared’s things.

Jared would like to think that somewhere down the line that Jensen will recover from this betrayal, but he thinks he knows better. When this sinks in Jensen will be crushed and Alona will have to pick up the pieces again, but Jensen will get to keep his skin on his back and his eyes in his face so Jared considers it a fair trade off, and while the inevitable life of absolute isolation and celibacy looms in Jared’s future he thinks that keeping Jensen alive and well is worth that, too.

The river comes up so abruptly that Jared almost falls in, frigid water sinking into the cracks of his paws and freezing his bones and he gasps a wheeze, tongue rolling out of his mouth as he tries to get the _hot_ out and the air in. He wades into the water with staggering, sloppy steps and feels the cold numb him to his bones and stream through his fur, taking the sweat and smell with it.

The moon is reflected on the water and Jared steps gingerly through the shallows on the uneven rocks of the riverbed, chasing her reflection up the river because he figures they’ll expect him not to try and fight the current. Jensen has probably realized he’s missing by now and the thought spurs Jared faster, pushing harder into the river’s waters and he wonders how long until he’ll be in the shallows even enough that he’ll be able to cross out on the other side, because the timer is running and he doesn’t want to know how a confrontation with Jensen will go like this.

He’s not out of the woods yet, literally or figuratively.

There’s a long, mournful howl off in the distance and the rocks slip out from underneath Jared’s feet. His neck drops below the current and he flounders to keep his nose above the arctic water, huffing out harsh, gritty whoops of air as he tries to coordinate four legs to swimming.

He thrashes for a moment, drifting down stream and towards the center of the river and he pushes hard, gives the last ounce of true thrust he has left in his body into steering himself back towards the bank and getting into the shallows.

His body hates him.

He hates himself.

His knees give out underneath his own weight and he collapses into the shallows with an icy splash, water droplets raining down upon his head while his mouth is half in and half out of the fresh clear water, running down his throat when he tries to breathe and into his eye.   

He’s cleared a lot of ground but Jensen could clear it faster, so he has to keep moving.

And still he feels like he’s being tracked, watched, followed.

He stretches a paw out, short toes and sharp nails curling around a flat, smooth rock but he can’t get his body to stretch another inch, he needs a moment.

If Jared were a predator stalking prey this would be the moment he would be waiting for. Keeping downwind, he’d track the frantic animal until it wore itself out and collapsed. An easy kill.

Jared realizes his mistake when the wolf steps out of the trees.

He smells like no one Jared’s met, looks like no one Jared’s ever seen, and feels like no one Jared would ever want to associate himself with.

Jensen’s father.

Jared’s sharp intake of breath is a gurgle in the river water.

Fuck.

Just. Fuck.

He strains against his own fatigue and the overuse of his own body until he’s almost upright and he feels stupid again like he’s waiting for his dad in the middle of his bedroom even though there’s nowhere to go and in a fight there is no doubt in his mind that he’d lose.

Lose. Really, really lose this time.

He’d been afraid that his own father would kill him, but trusted in that sense of paternal calm to protect him.

He has no illusions or assurance from Jensen’s father.

The snarl tears from the older wolf’s teeth and Jared braces himself, clenching his jaw with his eyes wide open because he wants to see it coming, wants to give a good gouge or two too on his way down. He bares his teeth right back around heavy breaths.

The other wolf lunges, body a perfect arching line thought the air and Jared has a stupid flash of a thought wondering what Moon’s going to do because She’s right there on the water next to him.

The moon doesn’t do a god damn thing.

Jared wonders if Jensen will be left alone after he’s dead.

-

Jensen comes down slowly once he realizes Jared isn’t on his heels anymore, cooling from sprint to lope to gait as he waits for Jared to catch up to him, wary of his speed. He keeps forgetting Jared’s still a pup.

He waits.

And he waits.

The short, sharp question he barks into the trees around him goes unanswered. He follows Jared’s trail on stilted legs with his nose in the air, whining the whole time. This isn’t any game he knows.

He whines again, long and high into the night but there’s no returning sound. Jared’s tracks are wide and sloppy, like he was running still. Sprinting.

Unease wells in Jensen’s stomach like bleeding from a pinprick, slow at first and then all at once when he stumbles across a second set of tracks.

Jensen howls like the sound is tearing out of his throat, long and loud and Moon laughs at him through the trees. He howls until his lungs putter out. It’s a warning, a call in the dark night of a dying animal and for a split fraction of a second when he hears another howl rise up through the branches to the west he thinks _Jared, Jared,_ Jared heard him, knows, understands. But then he recognizes Christian in the timber and his heart breaks.

Jensen read once somewhere that the act of walking in of itself was perpetually falling and countering gravity by catching yourself on your feet, stopping the pull of the earth with the leg and taking the jolt of recoil in the knee before the process begins all over again in the next step and if that’s true then Jensen isn’t falling. He’s spiraling. Hurtling and burning through the underbrush like an avalanche, a plane crash.

The howls rise up in chorus throughout the woods all around him –Alona, Jeff, Neil, Sean, Rachel, Sam, Jon- he can hear them all taking his point and their voices echo off the mountaintops and bounce from the trees burning in the air Jensen sucks down his dry throat. The heavenly din competes with the roar of the river and Jensen’s blood in his ears.

He breaks the tree-line like a battering ram and doesn’t give himself half a second to take in the scene –Jared clinging to the shallows like a drowned rat streaked with blood and Alpha tall and angry and snarling and pouncing- before he hurls himself into the fray.

The shift tears through him mid-air, seizing his muscles and twisting all of his bones and fibers out of, and then back into, shape.

He hits the wolf in the side as a human, shoulder plowing hard into the meat of his father’s side and they both go tumbling, careening into the river.

The water is frigid like daggers carving through Jensen’s bare skin when he hits the river’s surface, the crashing rush of the stream dragging a gasp from his lips and rushing down his throat and up his nose at the opportunity. It tastes awful and cold. Jensen coughs when he breaks the surface again and fights the current for a footfall, twisting through the torrent until he can roll into the shallows and find his feet again, crouching in the low, pulling waters and snarling, prepared.

There’s a short yelp of a bark somewhere off in the distance and unlike the howls that are edging closer and closer from the wilderness, it sounds exactly like Jared.

“Jared, go!” Jensen barks, eyes only for the dark slip of an animal crawling from the blackness of the river in the night with the yellow eyes and the white teeth.

Jensen’s feet are already stinging with numbness in the river water, unsteady but ultimately fortunate when he and the wolf begin to circle one another because he can only perfunctorily feel the river rocks cutting into his feet.

The wolf snarls, teeth bared in flashes as he licks them over threateningly, tail held high with fur puffed up huge like he could swell large enough to overtake the whole world with Jensen in it. They dance a tight circle in the water, close to the bank but not close enough that Jensen is willing to risk the break for shore just for the higher ground. Testing each other, taunting with teeth and shoulders. Jensen’s cheek burns and he can’t feel his hands.

“I don’t want this,” Jensen breathes heavily, ribs heaving against the skin of his chest even as he keeps the wolf firmly in his sights, between the animal and Jared. “Daddy, please.”

There’s no hesitation in the coil of muscle in his haunches before the wolf pounces.

Jensen gets his hands between the wolf’s teeth and his own neck before the animal strikes home, screaming as the fangs tear through his palms even as he grips hard and topples over.

The water sprays up over them and Jensen’s head cracks back against the smooth stone of the basin. Rocks in Jensen’s back, cold water up on his face and getting in his nose when he gasps and shouts, his own blood dropping down like rainwater onto his face and neck as he keeps snapping jaws at bay. The bones in his fingers grind against unyielding teeth, deafening in the hollow din of the river and the howls and Jensen’s screams.

Jensen kicks hard with bare feet, scrambling at the slick, wet fur of the wolf’s belly before finally going for the back legs, tripping the animal up on the slippery rocks and Jensen uses the momentum of the folly to flip their positions.

Claws bite into his stomach before he has even really, truly trapped the wolf to the ground. There were chances for escape, probably; openings the wolf could have taken but instead he chose to tear at Jensen’s unfurred underbelly, intent for everything important just under that thin skin. Thick claws gouge through Jensen’s skin, bounce off of his ribs.

Jensen howls again, this time in agony, and he wrenches on the hold he has on his father’s jaws individually, prying them apart on the axis of the hinge until something pops and the animal screams inhumanely and lashes hard at Jensen’s face, cuffing him in the jaw with all of the upper body force he can muster and Jensen goes sprawling back into the water.

It’s cold, it’s so fucking cold that it beats the air right out of Jensen’s lungs like he was hurled into a brick wall instead of a river. The water stings, like he’s being stabbed with glowing hot needles, held in flames until the silver turned white and then plunged into his flesh so quickly that the nerves frazzle, cook, disintegrate; over and over again, all over his body and in his gaping cuts and blooming bruises.  He skids and rolls on the uneven rock, drifting momentarily in the chill of the current that stings and numbs at his open wounds before he scrambles upright, finds his two feet and bowls straight into the animal charging him.

Jensen screams with every ounce of anything he has left in his chest, screams for himself and for his mother and for Jared and for the smoldering ashes of his lost childhood until he feels like he could turn inside out with the force of it. Moonshine on his back, cold and silver that cuts through the night, reflected off the water pooling all around Jensen and on his skin, glancing off the sharp lines of his shoulders when he plows into the wolf, through him. 

Jensen wants to kill him. Jensen wants to chase him past the horizon and straight into the sun, watch him burn. Jensen wants to bury his teeth into his neck, feel another pulse stutter out under his forepaw. Jensen wants Sonny back, Jensen wants every second of the last two years of his life back, Jensen wants his home and his mother and he wants Jared, here, now, safe.

They clash, grappling in the shallow water that burns frigid, Jensen growling as he shoulders the wolf in his barrel chest, snapping jaws behind his neck looking for purchase, river rocks giving way for his feet, scrabbling claws scoring open his back as he forges forward, deeper into the water.

The river isn’t still water, but there’s Moon’s reflection, close enough, good enough. Jensen could do it.

Jensen could.

The burning cold splashes up his neck, gets up his nose and Jensen snorts it out, shakes his head and drives hard into the mass of writhing muscle, pushing deeper into the roaring river on a snarl.

Jensen is the man in the moonlight. Nothing can stop him.

“Jensen!”

He could do it. Retribution in the purest sense. Tear out the wolf’s throat with claws or teeth, drag them both under the water and just hold and hold and hold and hold.

“Jensen!” 

Jared.

The current picks at his feet and Jensen nearly slips up, but pushes harder still when the wolf digs into his lower back and _drags,_ opening eight long, deep welts and Jensen screams as they tear through his scar, ripping through all those doubly sensitive nerves so acutely it more than makes up for the parts that Jensen can’t feel and the last piece of Jensen, the very last piece of him, shatters spectacularly.

The wolf’s body makes a hollow, meaty sound when it connects with the bedrock, cutting through the thin, clear veil of water with a misty splash where Jensen has outright hurled him, standing and panting heavily a few feet away with water up to his waist. The wolf struggles, but he can’t get his feet underneath of him while Jensen wades through the silver waters that slip lower and lower down his legs with each inch he climbs.

Jensen’s chest heaves and bows as he stares down at his father and the fury is his now.

“Yield!” Jensen snarls at the sloppy wet mess that is the man who barely raised him.

Yellow eyes glare up at him resentfully.

Jensen raises his hand, black claws unsheathing with a painless _snitck_ that he holds with all the tension in his torn-up hand.

“Yield,” he booms again and he hopes his father knows that this is the last pardon he will ever receive from his son.

Alpha’s belly is slick and slimy green from the rock’s moss and his throat is long and skinny and belongs to Jensen.

Jensen looks down upon him with pity and disgust.

His throat twists up and his jaw cracks and he _howls_ long and loud into the night for witnesses and they come, yellow flashes of eyes in between the dark trees of the night and they see Jensen, pale skin in the moonlight, standing over the old regime and they howl back.

“Leave,” he says to the thing in the mud. “Live in the shame of the family you’ve dishonored and the pack you’ve failed and never come back.”

There’s a fire in the eyes of the dog at his feet but it fades out when Jensen presses his foot over the animal’s windpipe.

“Or you can stay,” Jensen clarifies through sharp teeth.

Always with a mind for the fact of matters the animal looks cowed and, somewhere deep underneath the anger and resentment, impressed.

The animal slinks through the trees with its tail between its legs and the yellow eyes clear a path so none of them touch it and for the third time in his life Jensen has bitten off far fucking more than he can chew while there were eyes on him.

Jared is still on the bank, cold and wet and _stupid,_ but alive and okay and that’s all Jensen needs to be able to hold on to his sanity right now. The night looms, dark and endless on every side of Jensen, and Moon hangs in the sky, unfathomable inches away from Jensen’s bleeding hands or the dark forest full of bright eyes watching him, waiting for him, but so long as Jared’s breathing Jensen thinks he can do it.

He stumbles trying to get all the way out of the water, tripping over rocks and grit on his way to Jared and Jared just holds out his arms like an infant begging to be held and Jensen obliges, collapsing to the ground next to him so Jared can wind his arms around his neck and cling. Outside of the heat of the moment he can see Jared’s thigh is torn to hell, deep enough that they’ll be limping home together, and there are four fine gouges plowed through the side of his face.

“We match,” Jared sniffs, hair and skin and eyes wet.

“You’re okay?” Jensen thumbs over Jared’s eyebrow beseechingly, leaving more crimson smears in his wake. Jared’s skin is cold and wet, beaded with river water and his dark hair is plastered down over his forehead so Jensen pushes it out of the way, angles Jared’s face up so he can see in the moonlight. “I mean, other than being a moron, you’re okay?”

“Scared,” Jared admits and tears do fall this time, clinging to dark lashes before slipping down his red cheeks. “Are you okay? I thought- Shit, Jensen.”

“I’m good,” Jensen grunts, repositioning in the blind attempt to find some sitting position that is any way comfortable, but comfort is a few weeks off. His back stings like hell, his stomach is bleeding, his head hurts, his hands are wrecked to shit. Jared’s fingers card up through the hair at the base of his skull, stroking idly. Jensen’s okay.

The wolves are edging closer, barely in the tree-line now and Jensen can feel their nerves and their excitement, their want and need to be close and touch and feel mingling right next to their fear, the fear of the unknown.

“Are you,” Jared starts, stalls out. “I don’t understand. I mean did you just- Are you in charge now?”

“I guess, yeah…” Jensen heaves a sigh and then winces when the action stretches his skin a bit farther than it’s willing to go.

“I’m so sorry, Jensen,” Jared stammers out quickly, eyes wide with panic. “I was just trying-”

Jensen scoffs. “Shut up, Jared.”

Jared looks affronted for a moment before bemusement breaks across his face and he allows himself to really believe that they’re going to be okay. “What now?”

“Let the wild rumpus start,” Jensen whispers under his breath into the dark and Jared laughs on a husky little cough.

The first dainty paw steps over the skirt of underbrush of the forest onto the muddy bank and the others will follow soon.


	16. Chapter 16

  
The move to Michigan is much less eventful than the move to Vermont was. 

Jensen spends three weeks up in Michigan with a realtor touring large houses on large sites before he gives the all-clear to sell the houses in Vermont. It takes two days for everyone to pack up and there are no tears shed during the drive up into the mountains.

The house used to be an inn, a hundred some odd years ago. The build is colonial and beautiful, whitewashed brick and tall columns lining the fat ring of the porch that hangs the corner of the front and mirrors a balcony on the upper level with room for sunning chairs and porch swings and loveseats with bright yellow cushions so they can sit out at night and look out into the seventy square acre valley Jensen’s brought them. 

The kitchen is a little industrial, lacking in the homey warmth but he has plans to gut it and replace the stainless steel with glazed ceramics and soft forest colors, knock out the wall between it and the dining room and open the area up wide so they can cook and eat and exist together all at once. 

There are enough rooms but he’ll build up, build more so that they can have a nursery and a game room and a sun room. The back of the house is full of spacious windows with intricate framework that open up to the view of the forest stretching out for miles and miles all around them.

Their closest neighbor is eleven miles down the road and Jensen has been seeing about picking up all of that land too, so he can have the lake and not have to worry about trespassers. 

Beyond that house is another forty miles to town, and it’s a cute town to boot. The butcher isn’t Moroccan, the girl who mans that counter at the gas station has no relation to the local preacher, but there’s a decent local life. The school is a good size and the principal had been kind when Jensen had approached her with a list of new enrollments. There’s an auto shop off of Main Street run by a podgy old bastard with pock marks and a sneer that only said, “If the kid can figure out what the hell’s making that noise, he’s hired,” when Mark turned in his application. Closer to the shopping crux that seems to house the community’s heartbeat is a used bookshop where Misha and Rachel share a shift. Danni and Adrianne swap shifts with Gen and Seb at a little shop on a wood alcove of the center called Potpourri and Mike gleefully works the register at a food stand that has free samples. 

Forty five minutes down the road in the opposite direction is a small community college and it isn’t everything that Jensen had hoped for, but for what it is, it’s pretty great. 

Alona takes classes there, aiming towards a teaching degree and they’ll have to talk about four year colleges when the time comes, but Jensen believes that if anyone could do it, it’s Alona. 

Patrick is taking an accounting course, per his own ambition and Jensen’s sincere request that they have someone to keep the books now that the old regime is over. 

Jensen takes French.

He’s learning how to drive. 

Not voluntarily, to be fair, and most of the time it still scares the absolute hell out of him, even with Jared sitting next to him and shouting, “Jensen, we’re in a field, there’s literally nothing you could possibly hit!” His heart pounds in his ears for hours after each lesson and Jared has to pry his hands away from the wheel when he does cut the engine, but it’s progress. 

Jared enrolled in a full course load as soon as they hit the doorstep of the new property, hauling home a stack of books that clean emptied his bank account, but he was beaming. 

Jensen loves every single piece of the house and all of the land, but he has to say his favorite part of it all is the attic with the circular window and the unfinished wood floors with the California king mattress on a box-spring seated in the direct center of the slanting roof over head, with all the floor space of the main floor but none of the walls to which Jensen has exerted his Alpha standing and laid claim to as his own. It’s drafty and dark and so wonderful Jensen can hardly breathe whenever he climbs the stairs and rests his forearms against the banister and takes the place in. 

One of the first things Jensen had tackled was adding a bathroom in the back corner of the attic, Jeff teaching him how to connect pipes and reroute electricity and drywall until they hauled up a clawfoot bathtub and a brand new toilet. Tiling had been a pain in the ass and wiring was Jensen’s new least favorite thing in the world, but he’d be lying if he said that he didn’t feel smugly proud every time he took a bath. 

He built that. 

The furniture is mix and match, things from Silvalopus that they’d had in storage, things they picked up along the way, things he had to buy brand new, piecing together a bedroom and an office space complete with a dark finish dresser, a wide oak desk with a strangely ornate velvet chair, and a wardrobe.

For example, the television mounted in the far corner is new and so is every movie stacked next to it and spilling out of the bookcase, but the bookcase itself and the ornate chairs that Jensen likes to curls up in and the rug underneath are old and smell faintly, very faintly of smoke. It will fade out soon enough. 

Not that he can ever smell it through the candles, anyway. 

Everything is covered in candles. 

They glow gently in the dark of the night when Jensen lights them up, smelling sweetly and warming everything they touch. 

The light touches Jared’s skin underneath of Jensen’s hands, lighting him up bronze and gold in the darkness and Jensen smiles into Jared’s chest, breathing in deeply 

He smells warm like sex and sunshine, the intermingling of himself and Jensen all over his skin melding with the length of the day. Jensen snuggles in closer to Jared’s chest, laying sprawled between Jared’s indecent spread-eagle with his chin gouging into the other boy’s sternum and his hands folded under his own neck, just staring contentedly. The sheet is crumpled around Jensen’s lower back, twisted up under Jared’s knees so that the only real cover Jared has is Jensen’s body spread out over his. 

“We’ll have to clear out the trees over there to build the stables,” Jensen mumbles, glancing away from the amused twitch at the corner of Jared’s lips to gaze out through the circular window, off into the far corner of the property, the fresh new growths of oncoming spring illuminated in the cool moonlight. “We’ll keep the rabbits close to the house and keep the porch lights on so the foxes won’t try to get at them.”

“Yeah?” Jared hums, only half paying attention as he drifts closer towards sleep.

“Yeah.” Jensen grins. He tugs his own hand out from being pinned from between their bodies and slides his fingers over Jared’s, squeezing pleasantly. “I have people coming in next week to walk the grounds and give me an estimate about digging a well, but I think for the most part we’re pretty good to do most everything else by ourselves. You and I can start plowing for the gardens tomorrow, if you’re up for it.” 

“Mm-hm,” Jared hums and Jensen’s grin breaks into a full on smile. He props himself up on his arms and leans up, kissing the edge of Jared’s chin and then his mouth and Jared finally starts to come around again. “I was paying attention.”

“I know.” Jensen noses at the underside of Jared’s jaw affectionately, bemused. 

“You still have to name the house, you know,” Jared reminds and his voice vibrates pleasantly from his neck to Jensen’s lips. 

“Illuna,” Jensen whispers into the skin of Jared’s throat. “Her name’s Illuna.” 

Fin.  



End file.
